Chapter I

When the young gentleman strolling through the park with his gun on his shoulder and an elderly spaniel at his heels came within sight of the house it occurred to him that the hour must be farther advanced than he had supposed, for the sun had sunk below the great stone pile, and an autumnal mist was already creeping over the ground. Amongst the trees the mist had been scarcely perceptible, but when the gentleman emerged from their shelter on to an avenue which ran through undulating lawns to the south front of the mansion, he perceived that the vista was clouded, and became for the firsttime aware of a chill striking through his light nankeen jacket. He quickened his steps a little, but instead of pursuing his way to the main front, with its handsome colonnade of the Corinthian order, and cupola surmounting the central compartment, he turned off the avenue, and, traversing an elegant flower-garden, embellished with various classical statues, approached a side-entrance in the east wing.

The house, which occupied the site of an earlier building, destroyed by fire half a century before, was a comparatively modern edifice, designed in the classic style, and executed in stone and stuccoed brick. A four hundred and fifty foot frontage made it impressive, and its proportions being extremely nice, and its situation agreeable, it was held by every Travellers’ Guide Book to be worth a visit of inspection on such days as its noble owner allowed it to be thrown open to the public. The enquiring traveller was informed that while the park and the pleasure-grounds were sumptuously adorned with works of art, these embellishments were not obtrusive, scarcely any object occurring to violate the principles of modern taste in garden-arrangement. The park, very richly timbered, was also adorned by water; it measured above ten miles in circumference, and was traversed by an avenue three miles in length. The gardens, which were varied and extensive, bespoke the attentions of an extremely skilled gardener, with underlings who permitted no weed to show its head, and no hedge or border to grow ragged. Formal beds were arranged with propriety of taste, and even the wilderness, beyond the Italian Garden and the shrubbery, was kept under decorous restraint.

“ Sale Park, ” read the Guide Book, “ the principal seat of his Grace the Duke of Sale, is a spacious and handsome structure, with colonnades connecting the wings with the central elevation, and a grand portico supporting a richly ornamented pediment. ” The visitor was then adjured to pause awhile to admire the ornamental water, the luxuriant growth of noble trees, and the view to be obtained from the south, or main front, before turning his gaze upon the stately mansion itself and absorbing all the glories of Corinthian columns, pediments, cupolas, which rendered it worthy of study.

The Guide Book bestowed some very warm praise upon the Grecian Temple, erected at enormous expense by the fifth Duke, but the young gentleman in the fustian pantaloons, and nankeen shooting-jacket passed it without a glance. Indeed, he seemed to be quite indifferent to the beauty and the grandeur of his surroundings, treading rather carelessly over neat grass borders, and permitting his spaniel to stray on to the flower-beds at will.

In his person as much as in his dress, which besides being of great simplicity included a shot-belt (an article of attire not at all in favour with gentlemen aspiring to elegance) he scarcely accorded with his stately setting. He was slightly built, and of rather less than medium height. He had light brown hair, which waved naturally above a countenance which was pleasing without being in any way remarkable. The features were delicate, the colouring rather pale, and the eyes, although expressive, and of a fine gray, not sufficiently arresting to catch the attention. He carried himself well, but without any air of consequence, so that in a crowd it would have been easier to have passed him over than to have distinguished him. His address was well-bred, and a certain dignity attached to his bearing, but either from the circumstance of his being only twenty-four years of age, or from a natural diffidence, his manner, without being precisely shy, was quiet to the point of self-effacement. In fact, tourists to whom he had occasionally been pointed out generally found it impossible to believe that such an unassuming figure could really be the owner of so much wealth and magnificence. But he had owned it for twenty-four years, together with Sale House, his town residence in Curzon Street, and eight other country seats, ranging from Somerset to a draughty castle in the Highlands. He was the Most Noble Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware, Duke of Sale and Marquis of Ormesby; Earl of Sale; Baron Ware of Thame; Baron Ware of Stoven; and Baron Ware of Rufford, and all these high-sounding titles had been his from the moment of his birth, for he was a posthumous child, the only surviving offspring of the sixth Duke, and of the gentle, unfortunate lady who, after presenting, her lord with two stillborn children, and three who did not survive infancy, expired in giving birth to a seven-months male child of such tiny size and sickly appearance that it was freely prophesied of him that he would join his little brothers and sisters in the family vault before the year was out. But the wise choice of a wet-nurse, the devotion of the Chief Nurse, the unremitting attentions of his doctors, the strict rule of his uncle and guardian, Lord Lionel Ware, and the fond solicitude of his aunt, had all combined to drag the seventh Duke through every phase of infantile disorder; and although his boyhood was rendered irksome by a delicacy of constitution that made him liable to take cold easily, and to succumb with alarming readiness to every infectious disease, he had not only survived, but had grown into a perfectly healthy young man, who, if not as stout as could have been wished, or of such fine physique as his uncles and cousins, was yet robust enough to cause his physician very little anxiety. The chief of these had more than once asserted his belief that the little Duke had a stronger constitution than was supposed, since his hold on life had throughout been so tenacious; but this was an opinion not shared by the anxious relatives, tutors, and attendants who had the Duke in their charge. It was some years since he had suffered any but the most trifling ailment, but his entourage still laboured under the conviction that he was a being to be cosseted and protected against every wind that blew.

It was therefore not with surprise that the young Duke, as he reached the east wing of his house, found that his approach had evidently been watched for. The door was flung open before he had set his foot upon the first of the stone steps that led up to it, and various persons were seen to have assembled in the passage to receive him. Foremost amongst these was his butler, an impressive individual whose demeanour gave the initiated to understand that if his Grace chose to demean himself by entering his house by a side door giving on to a narrow passage it was not for him to criticize such eccentric behaviour. He bowed the Duke in, and perceiving that he carried, besides his gun, a heavy game-bag, silently gestured to a footman to relieve his master of these unbecoming burdens. The Duke gave them up with a faint, rueful smile, but murmured that he had the intention of cleaning his barrels in the gun-room.

His head-keeper, took the gun, a fine Manton, from the footman, and said reproachfully: “I shall attend to it myself, your Grace. If I had known that your Grace was desirous of shooting today I would have sent up a loader, and—”

“But I didn’t want a loader,” said the Duke.

Mr. Padbury shook his head forbearingly.

“I think,” added the Duke, “that I might now and then—just now and then, you know, Padbury!—clean my guns for myself.”

Even the footman looked shocked at this, but, being only an underling, could only exchange glances with the fellow footman who had accompanied him to the side entrance. The butler, the steward, and the keeper all directed looks of deep reproach at the Duke, and the middle-aged man in the neat garb that proclaimed the valet exclaimed: “Clean your guns for yourself, your Grace! I should think not indeed! And your Grace wet through, I daresay, with only that thin jacket!”

“Oh, no!” said the Duke. He looked down at the muddied spaniel, and added: “But Nell must be rubbed down well.”

He was assured that this should instantly be done; the keeper began to say that he should lose no time in treating the damp gun-stock with a particular preparation of his own; and the steward, prefixing his intervention with a discreet cough, informed his master that my lord had been asking if he was not yet come in.

The Duke had listened rather absently to his valet’s and his keeper’s remarks, but this had the effect of claiming his attention. He appeared to abandon his intention of going to the gun-room, and asked in a slightly apprehensive tone if he were late for dinner.

The butler, who, although officially the steward’s inferior, was a man of far more commanding personality, replied somewhat ambiguously to this question that my lord had gone upstairs to change his dress above half an hour ago.

The Duke looked startled, and said that he must make haste; whereupon the butler, relaxing his severity, assured him benignly that dinner would be held for him, and went in a stately way down the passage to open the door that led into the main hall of the house.

But the Duke again disappointed him, this time by electing to run up the secondary staircase at the end of the passage.

His bedroom was an immense apartment opening out of the upper hall, and as he crossed this to his door he encountered his uncle, a fine-looking gentleman in the early fifties, with an aristocratic cast of countenance, and rather fierce eyes set under strongly marked brows.

Lord Lionel Ware, who prided himself on belonging to the old school, had changed his customary country habit of buckskins and top-boots for the knee-breeches considered de rigueur in his younger days, and carried an enamelled snuffbox in one hand, and a lace handkerchief. When he saw his nephew, his brows shot up, and he enunciated, in a sort of bark: “Ha! So you are come in, are you, Gilly?”

The Duke smiled, and nodded. “I beg pardon, sir! Am I late? I shall not keep you waiting above twenty minutes, I promise you.”

“No such thing!” said Lord Lionel testily. “Dinner will await your convenience, but you are a great fool to be staying out after dusk at this season. I daresay you will have taken one of your chills!”

“Oh, no!” replied the Duke, in the same sweet, absent tone he had used to his valet.

Lord Lionel ran a hand down the sleeve of that nankeen jacket, and appeared to be not dissatisfied. “Well!” he said. “I don’t wish to be for ever coddling you, boy, but I desire you will make haste out of those clothes. You will have got your feet wet in those half-boots. You had better have worn gaiters. Nettlebed! Has his Grace no gaiters to wear out shooting?”

“His Grace will not wear his gaiters, my lord,” said the valet, in condemnatory accents. “And his Grace did not send for me to lay out his clothes, nor apprise me of his intention to go shooting,” he added, less in self-exculpation than in sorrowful blame of his young master’s imprudence.

“I am glad you do not wish to be waited on hand and foot;” said Lord Lionel severely, “but this habit you have of slipping off without a word said is nonsensical, Gilly. One would suppose you were afraid someone might prevent you!”

A gleam of humour lit the Duke’s eyes; he said meekly: “I think I must have a secretive disposition, sir.”

“Nothing of the sort!” said his lordship. “It is high time you realized that you are of age, and may do as you please. Now, be off, and don’t neglect to change your stockings! I hope you have been wearing flannel ones, and not—”

“Lamb’s-wool,” said the Duke, more meekly still.

“Very well, and now make haste, if you please! Unless you wish to keep town-hours at Sale?”

The Duke disclaimed any such desire, and vanished into his bedchamber, where Nettlebed had already laid out his evening dress. The room, although of vast size, was very warm, for a fire had been lit in the grate much earlier in the day, and the windows closed against any treacherous fresh air. Curtains of crimson damask shut out the fading daylight, and the great fourpost-bed was hung with the same stuff. Branches of candles stood on the dressing-table and the mantelpiece; and a silver ewer of hot water had been placed in the wash-basin, and covered with a clean towel. The room was furnished throughout in crimson damask, and mahogany, and hung with a Chinese paper of the style made fashionable some years previously by the Prince Regent, who used it extensively in his summer palace at Brighton. Everything in it seemed to be made on rather too large and opulent a scale for its occupant, but it was not an uncomfortable apartment, and, during the day, was generally flooded with sunshine, since it faced south, commanding a view of the avenue, the formal beds and lawns beyond it, the sheet of ornamental water which the Guide Book so highly commended, and, in the distance, the noble trees of the home park. The Duke had slept in it ever since the day when his uncle had decreed that he was too old for petticoat government, and had removed him from his more homely nurseries, and installed him, a small and quaking ten-year-old, in it, telling him that it was his father’s room, and his grandfather’s before him, and that only the head of the house might inhabit it. As his Grace had been further informed by various members of his household that the fifth Duke had breathed his last in the huge bed, he could only be thankful that his frailty made Lord Lionel deem it advisable to set up a truckle-bed for a reliable attendant in the adjoining dressing-room.

Nettlebed, who might have been considered by some to be rather too elderly a valet for such a young man, began to bustle about, scolding fondly as he divested his master of his coat, and shot-belt, and grey cloth waistcoat. Like nearly everyone else who waited upon the Duke, he had previously been employed by the Duke’s father, and considered himself privileged to speak his mind to his master whenever he was out of earshot of other, less important, members of the household, before whom he invariably maintained the Duke’s dignity in a manner that daunted the Duke far more than the affectionate bullying he employed in private.

He said now, as he laid aside the shot-belt: “I wonder that my lord should not have said something to your Grace, if he noticed you was wearing this nasty, low belt, more fit for a poacher, one would have thought, than for a Gentleman, let alone one that was born, as the saying is, in the Purple. But, there! tell your Grace till Domesday  you’ll never mend your ways! And why would you not take a loader, pray, not to mention Padbury? I can tell your Grace he was quite put about to think you should be off without him, and very likely needing a beater as well.”

“No, I didn’t need a beater,” said the Duke, sitting down to allow Nettlebed to pull off his boots. “And as for my shot-belt, I daresay you may consider it a very vulgar appendage, but it spares my pockets, and is, I think, as quick a way of loading as any that I know.”

“If you had taken a loader with you, as was befitting, your Grace would not have needed any such,” said Nettlebed severely. “I could see his lordship was not best pleased.”

“I am sure he was not displeased for any such cause,” responded the Duke, walking towards the washstand, and lifting the towel from the ewer. “He is a great advocate for a man’s being able to do everything for himself that may come in his way.”

“That,” said Nettlebed, frustrating the Duke’s attempt to pick up the ewer, “is as may be, your Grace.” He poured the water into the basin, and removed the towel from the Duke’s hand. “But when his lordship takes a gun out, he has always his loader, and very likely a couple of beaters besides, for he is one as knows what is due to his position.”

“Well, if I do not know what isdue to mine I am sure it is not for want of being told,” sighed the Duke. “I think it would have been very pleasant to have been born one of my own tenants, sometimes.”

“Born one of your Grace’s own tenants!” ejaculated Nettlebed, in an astonished tone.

The Duke took the towel, and began to wipe his wet face with it. “Not one of those who are obliged to live in Thatch End Cottages, of course,” he said reflectively.

“Thatch End Cottages!”

“At Rufford.”

“I do not know what your Grace can be meaning!”

“They are for ever complaining of them. I daresay they should all be pulled down. In fact, I am sure of it, for I have seen them.”

“Seen them, your Grace?” said Nettlebed, quite shocked. “I am sure I do not know when you can have done so!”

“When we were in Yorkshire, I rode over,” replied the Duke tranquilly.

“Now that,” said Nettlebed, in a displeased way, “is just what your Grace should not be doing! It is Mr. Scriven who should attend to such matters, as I am sure he is willing and able to do, let alone he has his clerks to be running about the country for him!”

“Only he does not attend to it,” said the Duke, sitting down before his dressing-table.

Nettlebed handed him his neckcloth. “Then your Grace may depend upon it there is nothing as needs attending to,” he said.

“You remind me very much of uncle,” remarked the Duke.

Nettlebed shook his head at him, but said: “Well, and I’ll be bound his lordship has told your Grace there isn’t a better agent than Mr. Scriven in the length and breadth of the land.”

“Oh, yes!” said the Duke. “Nothing could exceed his care for my interests.”

“Well, and what more could your Grace desire?”

“I think it would be very agreeable if he cared for my wishes.”

A slightly weary note in his master’s quiet voice made Nettlebed say with a roughness that imperfectly concealed his affection: “Now, your Grace, I see what it is! You have tired yourself out, carrying that heavy game-bag, and your gun, and you’re in a fit of the dismals! If Mr. Scriven don’t seem always to care for your wishes, it’s because your Grace is young yet, and don’t know the ways of tenants, nor what’s best for the estate.”

“Very true,” said the Duke, in a colourless voice.

Nettlebed helped him to put on his coat. “Your Grace’s honoured father had every confidence in Mr. Scriven, that I do know,” he said.

“Oh, yes!” said the Duke.

Feeling that his master was still unconvinced, Nettlebed began to recite the numerous virtues of the agent-in-chief, but after a few moments the Duke interrupted him, saying: “Well, never mind! Have we company to-night?”

“No, your Grace, you will be quite alone.”

“It sounds delightful, but I am afraid it is untrue.”

“No, no, your Grace, it is just as I tell you! You will find no one below but my lord, and my lady, and Mr. Romsey, and Miss Scamblesby!” Nettlebed assured him.

The Duke smiled, but refrained from making any remark. He submitted to having his coat smoothed across his shoulders, accepted a clean handkerchief, and moved towards the door. Nettlebed opened this for him, and nodded to an individual hovering in the hall outside, who at once withdrew, apparently to spread the news of the Duke’s coming. He was the Groom of the Chambers, and although more modern households might have abolished this office, at Sale Park a pomp belonging to the previous century was rigidly adhered to, and the groom continued to hold his post. During the long period of the Duke’s minority he had had little scope for his talents, but he was now hopeful of seeing the great house once more full of distinguished guests, all with their exacting personal servants, and their quite incompatible fads and fancies, driving a lesser man to suicide, but affording Mr. Turvey an exquisite enjoyment.

The Duke walked down the stairs, and crossed a vast, marble-paved hall to the double doors that led into the gallery. Here it had been the custom of the Family to assemble before dinner since the Duke’s grandfather had re-rebuilt the mansion. As the gallery was over a hundred foot long, it had sometimes seemed to the Duke that some smaller apartment might be a preferable assembly room on any but Public Days, but a mild suggestion made to this effect had been greeted by his uncle with such disapproval that with his usual docility he had abandoned any hope of making a change.

Two liveried footmen, who appeared to have been trying to impersonate wax effigies, suddenly sprang to life, and flung open the doors; the Duke dwarfed by their height and magnificence, passed between them into the gallery.

Since September was drawing to an end, and the evenings were already a little chilly, a log-fire had been kindled in the grate at one end of the gallery. Lord Lionel Ware was standing before it, not precisely with his watch in his hand, but presenting the appearance of one who had but that moment restored the timepiece to his pocket. Beside him, and making a praiseworthy if not entirely successful attempt to divert his mind from the lateness of the hour, was the Reverend Oswald Romsey, once tutor to the Duke, now his Chaplain, and engaged in the intervals of his not very arduous duties in writing a learned commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. On a straw-coloured brocade sofa, wholly shielded from the fire’s warmth by her husband’s stalwart form, was disposed the Duke’s aunt, a lady fashioned in a generous mould which the current mode of high waists and narrow, skirts could not have been said to have flattered; and sitting primly upright in a chair suitably withdrawn from the intimate circle was Miss Scamblesby, a spinster of uncertain age and nebulous relationship, who was always referred to by Lady Lionel as “my cousin,” and had been an inmate of Sale Park for as long as the Duke could remember, performing the duties of a lady-in-waiting. As Lady Lionel was extremely kind-hearted, she was not in the least overworked, or browbeaten, the only ills she had to endure being her ladyship’s very boring conversation, and his lordship’s snubs, which last, however, were dealt out so impartially to every member of the household as to make her feel herself to be quite one of the family.

But the Duke, who had, his uncle frequently told him, too much sensibility, could not rid himself of the notion that Miss Scamblesby’s position was an unhappy one, and he never neglected to bestow on her a distinguishing degree of attention, or to acknowledge a relationship which did not, in fact, exist, by addressing her as Cousin Amelia. When his uncle pointed out to him, not in a carping spirit, but as one who liked accuracy, that being only some kind of a third cousin to Lady Lionel her connection with the Ware family was of the most remote order, he merely smiled, and slid out of a possible argument in a manner rendered perfect by years of practice.

As he walked down the gallery, he smiled at her, and enquired after the headache she had complained of earlier in the day. While she blushed, thanked, and disclaimed, Lord Lionel crushingly remarked that he did not know why people should have headaches, since he himself had never suffered such an ill in his life; and Mr. Romsey pleased nobody by saying: “Ah, my lord Duke has a fellow-feeling, I daresay! I am sure no one has suffered more from an affliction we more hardy mortals are exempt from!”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Lord Lionel, who very much disliked to have his nephew’s delicacy of constitution mentioned by anyone other than himself.

Mr. Romsey’s well-meaning if unfortunate remark had the effect of arousing Lady Lionel from her customary lethargy, and she began to enumerate, with a surprising degree of animation, all the more shocking headaches her nephew had endured during his sickly boyhood. The Duke bore this patiently, but Lord Lionel pshawed and fidgeted, and finally broke in on a discourse that threatened to be never-ending, saying crossly: “Very well, very well, ma’am, but this is all forgotten now, and we do not wish to be reminding Gilly of it! Were you hedgerow-shooting, my boy? Had you any sport?”

“Three brace of partridges only, and some wood-pigeons, sir,” responded the Duke.

“Very well indeed,” said his uncle approvingly. “I have frequently observed that for all it may not be real game, as we understand it, the wood-pigeon gives some of the hardest shots of all. What shot did you use?”

“Seven,” said the Duke.

This made Lord Lionel shake his head a little, and point out the advantages of a four or a five. His nephew, having listened politely, said that he would grant him an accidental shot at long distance with his heavier shot, but that a well-breeched and properly bored gun would shoot Number Seven better than any other. As the Duke was a very pretty shot, Lord Lionel allowed this to pass with no more than a glancing reference to newfangled fads, and asked him if he had taken one of his Purdeys out.

“No, a Manton,” said the Duke. “I have been trying Joseph Manton’s New Patent Shot.”

“I have bought my shot from Walker and Maltby any time these thirty years,” declared his lordship. “But the old ways will never do for you young men! I suppose you will tell me this New Patent has some particular virtue!”

“I think the shot is more compact, and it is certainly cleaner to handle,” replied the Duke.

“I hope, Gilly, that you did not get your feet wet?” said Lady Lionel. “You know, if you were to take a chill it will go straight to your throat, and I was thinking only the other day that I cannot recall the name of that very obliging physician who recommended electricity. You were only a child, so I daresay you might not remember, but it was very excellent, though your uncle disliked it very much.”

“Does Borrowdale not know that you are ready for dinner?” demanded Lord Lionel loudly. “It will be six o’clock before we sit down to it!”

“There was quite a fashion for electricity at that time,” pursued his wife placidly. “I am sure I know of a dozen persons who took the treatment.”

“It was what the Captain calls all the crack,” said Miss Scamblesby, prefixing her remark with the titter which never failed to irritate his lordship.

Lord Lionel was both fond and proud of his son, but he did not propose to submit to having his words quoted to him, and he immediately said that he had the greatest dislike of cant expressions. Miss Scamblesby’s subsequent confusion was only relieved by the entrance of Borrowdale, who came in at that moment to announce that dinner was served. The Duke then assisted his aunt to rise from the sofa, Miss Scamblesby draped a Paisley shawl round her shoulders, Mr. Romsey handed her her fan and her reticule, and the whole party filed out into the hall, and across it to the dining-saloon.

Here the Duke took his place at the head of the table, in an immense carved oak chair, and Lord Lionel installed himself in a similar chair at the foot. Lady Lionel sat at her nephew’s right hand, and Miss Scamblesby and Mr. Romsey established themselves opposite to her, with only one footman between the pair of them.

Lord Lionel being an advocate of what he considered a neat, plain dinner, only two courses were served at Sale Park when the family dined alone. The first of these consisted of a tureen of turtle, removed with fish, which was in its turn removed with a haunch of venison. Several side-dishes, such as pork cutlets with Rober sauce, larded fillets of beef, tenderones of veal and truffles, and a braised ham, graced the board, but since his lordship was a moderate trencherman, and the Duke had a notoriously small appetite, the only person who did justice to the spread was Miss Scamblesby, who had (so his lordship had more than once remarked to his nephew) the inordinate appetite of all poor relations.

While the first course dragged on its way, conversation was of a desultory nature. The Duke looked tired; his aunt rarely troubled herself to make conversation; and Lord Lionel seemed preoccupied. When the first course was carried out in procession, however, he roused himself to say: “Well! You are all very dull to-night!” a remark which not unnaturally bereft the assembled company of any conversational ideas they might have had.

“Well, Gilly!” said his lordship, after a pause of which no one showed any sign of wishing to take advantage. “Have you nothing to say for yourself?”

A slightly apprehensive look came into the Duke’s eyes. Mr. Romsey said kindly: “I fancy you are tired, my lord.”

“No, no!” Gilly disclaimed, almost shrinking from the imputation.

It had the effect of softening Lord Lionel. “Tired? I am sure I do not know why you must all be for ever supposing him knocked up by the least exertion! Let me tell you, it is very irksome to a young man to have such nonsense talked of him! You are bored, Gilly! Yes, yes, you need not trouble to deny it, for I do not wonder at it! You should have invited some few of your Oxford friends to come down and shoot with you. It is dull work for you here alone.”

“Thank you, I am very happy, sir!” Gilly stammered. “You—I mean, we have invited several parties for the pheasant-shooting, I believe.”

“Well, well, that is looking some way ahead!” said his lordship indulgently. “You will scarcely wish for any large shooting parties until November!”

The second course here made its appearance, and a fresh array of silver dishes was set out. Some pigeons and a hare constituted the main features, but there were besides a quantity of vegetables, and several creams, jellies, and cakes, including, as Miss Scamblesby was quick to perceive, a Gateau Mellifleur, to which she was extremely partial.

Lady Lionel helped herself from a dish of artichoke bottoms in sauce. “I have been thinking,” she said. “If you should care for it, Gilly, we could get up a rubber of whist after dinner. I daresay we might prevail upon our good Mr. Romsey to take a hand, and if he does not care to, Amelia does not play so very ill.”

Her husband set his wineglass down rather hurriedly, and said with more haste than civility that she must know that Gilly disliked whist. Then, perceiving quadrille in her eye, he added: “Or any other game of cards. Besides, I have just recollected that Chigwell brought up the mails from the receiving-office this afternoon, and there is a letter for you from your Uncle Henry, Gilly. I will give it to you  after dinner.”

The Duke’s entertainment having been thus provided for, Lady Lionel was able to relapse into indolence, merely wondering in an idle fashion what Lord Henry could be writing to Gilly about. Miss Scamblesby said that it seemed a long time since they had had the felicity of seeing dear Lord and Lady Henry Ware at Sale; and Mr. Romsey asked if Mr. Matthew was not now a freshman up at Oxford.

“No, he is entering on his third year,” the Duke replied.

“But not, I fancy, at our college, my lord?” Mr. Romsey said playfully.

As Mr. Romsey was a Balliol scholar, and the Duke had been at Christ Church, the possessive pronoun could only be taken to refer to the circumstance of his having accompanied his pupil to Oxford to keep a watchful eye on his health and his associates. The Duke, who had suffered as only a sensitive youth could under such an arrangement, found the reminder so irritating that he was obliged to close his lips on an unkind retort.

“My nephew is at Magdalen College,” said Lord Lionel shortly. “As for not having seen my brother and his wife here, they spent six weeks with us in the summer, and brought all the children, as I for one am not likely to forget very readily! They cut up the south lawn with their cricket, and if they had been sons of mine —”

“But they asked my permission, sir, and I gave it,” Gilly said, in a soft voice.

Lord Lionel opened his mouth to utter a blistering reproof, recollected himself, shut it again, and, after a slight pause, said: “Well, it is your lawn, and you may do as you wish with it, but I own I cannot conceive what you were about to give permission!”

A rather mischievous smile lit the Duke’s eyes: he looked under his lashes at his uncle, and replied: “I think it was perhaps because I have wanted very often to play cricket there myself.”

“Yes! and you would thank me for it today, I daresay, had I allowed you and Gideon to ruin one of the finest pieces of turf in the country!” said his lordship.

Miss Scamblesby having by this time disposed of her portion of the Gateau Mellifleur, Lady Lionel heaved herself up out of her chair. The Duke picked up such small articles as she dropped, the doors were held open, and both ladies withdrew to leave the gentlemen to their wine.

The covers having been removed, the cloth, swept away, and decanters set upon the table, the servants left the room, and Lord Lionel settled down to enjoy his port in what he termed comfort, and his nephew thought great discomfort. The fire behind him was beginning to be unpleasantly hot, the ornate carving of his chair made leaning back in it a penance, and he was not fond of port.

Lord Lionel began to talk of some improvements to one of the Duke’s estates, which the agent-in-chief thought might be advantageous. “You should see Scriven yourself, Gilly,” he said. “You know, you must not forget that in less than a year now you will have the management of everything in your own hands. I am very anxious you should acquaint yourself with all the business of your estates.”

“Dear me, yes!” said Mr. Romsey, sipping his wine delicately. “It is very true, though I may scarcely credit it! My dear lord, you will indeed be twenty-five next year! Yet it seems only yesterday that I was so fortunate as to be chosen to be your chief guide and preceptor!”

“I have never had the least doubt that I made a wise  choice,” said his lordship graciously, “but what I am saying is that my nephew must not look to be guided for many months more. You have a thousand amiable qualities, Gilly, but you lack decision of character!”

The Duke did not deny the accusation. He felt it to be true, but he could scarcely repress a shudder at the thought of the painful scenes that must have taken place at Sale had he been endowed with the same forceful personality that distinguished his uncle. His cousin Gideon had it in some measure, and had certainly won his father’s respect with it; but Gideon had always been a robust and pugnacious boy, and was quite untroubled by sensitive nerves. He had cared for being thrashed as little as for being rated. The Duke had never known which of the two fates he dreaded most. Fortunately for him, Lord Lionel had used him with far more gentleness than he showed his son, so that he was not really at all afraid of him. But a naturally sweet disposition, a dislike of quarrelling, and of loud, angry voices, combined with a rueful appreciation of the very real devotion to his interest and welfare that inspired his uncle’s strict rule made him submit docilely where his cousin would have flamed into revolt.

“You are the head of the family, Gilly,” Lord Lionel said. “You must learn to assert yourself. I have done all that a man may to train and educate you for the position you must occupy, but you are by far too diffident.”

Mr. Romsey shook his head reminiscently. “Indeed, there are few young men today who can boast of my lord Duke’s advantages,” he said. “But I for one feel sure, sir, that he will prove himself worthy of your unremitting solicitude.”

The Duke thought of the period of his boyhood, spent largely at his house near Bath, so that he might derive the benefit of the waters there; of three trammelled years at Oxford; of two more trammelled years upon the Continent, with a military gentleman added to his entourage, to teach him horse-manage, and manly sports; and suddenly he made up his mind to assert himself, even if only in a small matter. He pushed back his chair, and said: “Shall we join my aunt now?”

“Really, Gilly, you must see that I have not yet finished my glass!” said Lord Lionel. “Do not, I beg of you, get into a scrambling way of doing things! You should always make sure that the company is ready to rise before you give the signal.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the Duke, abandoning the attempt to assert himself.

Chapter II

When the gentlemen at last joined the ladies, they found them established before the fire in the Crimson Saloon, one of a handsome suite of reception rooms on the first floor. Lady Lionel had sent for some working-candles, and her embroidery-frame, upon which latter Miss Scamblesby was engaged in setting stitches in various coloured silks. Her ladyship rarely occupied herself with anything more fatiguing than the knotting of a fringe, but by constantly desiring to have her embroidery brought to her, choosing the silks, and criticizing the design, she was easily able to persuade herself that she was an indefatigable worker, and would receive compliments upon her skill with perfect complaisance.

Mr. Romsey went over to Miss Scamblesby’s side, to observe what progress she had made; and while Lady Lionel informed him for perhaps the tenth time that the work was destined to form an altar-cloth for the Chapel, her husband gave Gilly the letter from his younger uncle, and waited expectantly for it to be handed over to him when Gilly had finished his perusal of it.

Gilly read it in some little surprise. Lord Henry, who was of a saving turn of mind, had managed to avoid the cost of an enclosure by compressing the intelligence he wished to convey on a single, crossed sheet. He wrote to inform his nephew of a very desirable connection he was about to form, through the betrothal of his eldest daughter to a scion of a distinguished family. He contrived to squeeze a number of details into his single sheet, and ended by expressing the hope that the proposed alliance would meet with his nephew’s approval.

The Duke gave up this letter to Lord Lionel in a mechanical way, and his lordship, casting his eye over it, said: “Ha! I suspected as much! Yelverton’s son, eh? Pretty well for a chit not out of the schoolroom!”

“I cannot conceive why he should write to tell me of it,” remarked the Duke.

Lord Lionel looked up from the letter to direct an admonishing frown at him. “Naturally he would do so! It is a very proper letter. You will write your felicitations, of course, and say that you are very well pleased with the connection.”

“But he will not care a button whether I am pleased or not,” objected the Duke, with a touch of impatience.

“Pray do not let me have these odd humours!” begged his lordship irascibly. “One would suppose you do not attend to anything that is said to you, Sale! I have been telling you for ever that you are the head of the family, and must learn to take your place as such, and now you talk rubbishing stuff to me of your uncle’s not caring a button for your approval! If you are so lost to the sense of what is due to your position, you must perceive that he is not! A very pretty letter he has written you: expresses himself just as he ought! I must say, I had not thought he would have contrived such an eligible match for that girl—not but what it is not precisely what I should have cared for myself.”

“No,” agreed Gilly, taking his letter again. “My cousin is not yet seventeen, and I am sure Alfred Thirsk must be forty if he is a day.”

“Well, well, that need not signify!” said Lord Lionel. “The thing is that I have never fancied that brood of Yelverton’s. There is a damned vulgar streak in them all; came into the family when the old man—Yelverton’s father, I mean: you would not recall—married some rich Cit’s heiress. However, it is none of my business!”

The Duke said a little impishly: “Very true, sir, but if it is mine I think I should inform my uncle that I do not like the match. Poor Charlotte! I am sure she cannot wish for it!”

Lord Lionel audibly drew a breath. In the voice of one restraining himself with a strong effort, he said: “You will not, I trust, be guilty of such a piece of impertinence, Sale! Pray, what should a young man of your age know about the matter?”

“But you told me, sir, that I must learn to assert myself,” said the Duke meekly.

“Let me assure you, Gilly, that that kind of nonsense is beyond the line of being pleasing!” said Lord Lionel sternly. “You must be perfectly well aware that this very proper letter of your uncle’s is the merest formality, and not to be taken as an excuse for you to be putting yourself forward in a very unbecoming way! A fine state of affairs it would be if a man of your uncle’s age and experience is to be told how he is to manage his household by a young jackanapes of a nephew! You will write to him as I have directed, and mind you write it fair, and not in one of your scrawls! You had better let me see the letter before it is sealed.”

“Very well, sir,” said the Duke.

Perceiving that he had quite banished the smile from his nephew’s eyes, Lord, Lionel relented, saying in a kindlier tone: “There is no need to be cast into a fit of dejection because I am obliged to give you a scold, boy. There, we shall say no more about it. Give the letter to your aunt to read, and come into the library with me. I have something I wish to say to you.”

The Duke looked extremely apprehensive on hearing these ominous words, but he obediently handed over the letter to Lady Lionel, and followed his uncle downstairs to the library on the entrance floor. Since the candles had already been lit, and the fire made up, it was apparent to him that this interview had been premeditated. Insensibly, he braced himself to meet it with becoming fortitude, wishing that he dared light one of the cigarillos which his cousin Gideon had very reprehensively bestowed on him. But as Lord Lionel objected strongly to the vice of smoking, both on the score of itsbeing a vulgar, dirty habit, and of its being excessively injurious to the lungs, he did not dare.

“Sit down, Gilly!” said Lord Lionel, treading over to the fire, and taking up his favourite position before it.

This command was less unnerving than earlier ones (delivered in ferocious accents) to stand up straight and put his hands behind his back, but the prospect of having to sit in a low chair while his uncle loomed over him was almost equally daunting. The Duke’s apprehensive look deepened, and although he did sit down, it was with obvious reluctance.

Lord Lionel, who did not include the taking of snuff amongst the vulgar and dirty habits engendered by the use of tobacco, helped himself to a generous pinch, and shut his box with a snap. “You know, Gilly,” he said, “that letter of your uncle’s comes remarkably pat.”

The Duke’s eyes lifted quickly to his face. “Yes, sir?”

“Yes, my boy. You will be of full age in less than a year now, and it is high time we were thinking of settling your affairs comfortably.”

The Duke was aware of a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. He kept his eyes fixed on his uncle’s face. “Yes, sir?”

For once in his life, Lord Lionel seemed disinclined to come speedily to the point of his discourse. He opened his snuff-box again, and said: “I have always tried to do my best for you, boy, I daresay you may sometimes have thought me harsh—”

“Oh, no!” said the Duke faintly.

“Well, I am happy to hear you say so, for I am very fond of you, Gilly, and always have been. I have no scruple in telling you that apart from your health, and a want of spirits in you, you have never caused me anxiety.”

The Duke, feeling that a response was expected, stammered: “Th-thank you, sir!”

“I don’t say that you are as wise as I could wish,” said Lord Lionel, tempering his praise, “or that you have not a great many faults, but on the whole I fancy your poor father might have been not dissatisfied with his son, had he lived to see you today.” Here he took another pinch of snuff. As Gilly was unable to think of anything to say, an uneasy silence prevailed. Lord Lionel broke it. “Your father left you to my guardianship,” he said, “and I think I may say that I have in every way open to me followed out what I knew to be his wishes. I even had you christened Adolphus,” he added, a slight sense of grievance overcoming him, “although it is one of these new-fangled German names that I very much dislike. However, that was a small thing, and you know I have never called you by it. And I have never permitted your uncle Henry to interfere in your education, for all he has been one of your trustees. I have nothing to say against your uncle, and no doubt his notions do very well for his own sons, but they will not do for me, and they would not have done for your father either, and a thousand pities it was that his name should have been included in the Trust. But there is no sense in repining over that, and I hope I know how to deal with my own brother.”

The Duke, drawing upon his recollection, could not feel that this hope was misplaced, but he did not think himself called upon to say so. Instead he uttered an indistinguishable murmur.

“There is no reason why you should be treated like a child, Gilly,” said Lord Lionel, in a burst of candour, “so I shall not conceal from you that I have a very poor opinion of your uncle’s judgment! He does not want, precisely, for sense, but you must know that he never partook of your father’s and my sentiments as one could have wished he might have done, and when he married that foolish woman—but I do not wish to dwell upon that, and if he chose to ally himself with a female out of a canting Methodist family, and to breed a pack of ill-conditioned brats who can think of nothing better to do than to ruin a lawn it has taken fifty years to bring to perfection, I am sure it was not for me to cavil. Although, mind you,” he added admonishingly, “I told him how it would be at the outset. But Henry was never one to listen to those who might be supposed to be a little wiser than himself. I trust you will not turn out to be the same, Gilly.”

The Duke assured him that he would not.

“No, well, I fancy I have drilled a few proper notions into your head,” agreed his uncle. “But all this has nothing to do with what I have to say to you!” He bent his austere gaze upon Gilly’s downcast face, and was silent for a moment. “I am speaking of your marriage, Gilly,” he said abruptly.

The Duke looked up, startled. “My marriage, sir!”

“There is nothing to be surprised about in that, surely!” said Lord Lionel. “It is not, I fancy, unknown to you that I have already made certain arrangements on your behalf. I do not believe in making a secret of a very ordinary business, and since I am quite as much concerned with the question of your future comfort and happiness as with the very important one of securing the succession, I have been careful to choose for you a bride who will bring you, besides the necessary advantages of birth and fortune, a reasonable chance of harmony in your future life. In this, I hope you will realize, my boy, that I have had all these modern notions with which I make no doubt you are imbued in my head. You are not to suppose that my mind was irrevocably fixed upon the first and most obvious choice. I have had several young females in my eye, but I believe they will not do for you, and it is now some years since I have entertained any other idea than that you should, as soon as you had come of full age, marry Lady Harriet Presteigne.”

The Duke got up suddenly, and said in some little agitation: “Yes—no! It had not been unknown to me. But the succession cannot be in danger, sir, while my cousin Gideon and, indeed, my Uncle Henry’s five sons—”

“Do not talk to me of your Uncle Henry’s sons!” commanded Lord Lionel wrathfully. “If they are all to take after the eldest of them, who, I am hearing, is for ever in some disgraceful scrape, as I have very little doubt they will do, for what can one expect, if a man will marry a Methodist?—I can only say that I am astonished you should entertain the notion of seeing one of them here in your shoes for as much as a moment!”

“But I should not see them in my shoes,” pointed out the Duke reasonably. “And really, you know, sir, Mart’s scrapes cannot be called disgraceful! And in any event I am sure that Gideon would fill my shoes far better than I could ever do. Surely—”

“You may put that out of your head once and for all!” said Lord Lionel, in his sternest voice. “Understand me, Gilly, I have never thought to see my son in your place, and nothing could more distress me than the knowledge that it must come to that in the end! I venture to say that Gideon shares my sentiments to the full. I do not know what cause he can have given you to suppose—”

“None! Oh, none!” Gilly said hurriedly. “I only meant—I only wished to say that it cannot be thought necessary for me to marry so soon!”

“So soon?” repeated his uncle, raising his brows. “My dear boy, it has been an understood thing between myself and Ampleforth any time these five years! I make no doubt the young lady herself is fully aware of it, for her mother is a woman of great good sense, and will have made it her business to prepare the girl for the position she is destined to occupy.”

“You think that Harriet herself knows of it?” the Duke said, in a stunned voice.

“Certainly. Why should she not?” replied his uncle. “If you have some romantic notion in your head, I advise you to rid yourself of it, boy. Romantic notions do very well in a trashy novel, and I daresay they may not come amiss amongst the lesser ranks of society, but they are not for persons of our order, and that you may depend upon. Yes, yes, you think me very unfeeling, I daresay, but you may believe me when I tell you that I have seen more unhappiness arising out of a so-called love-match than from any other cause in this world. I dare swear you, at twenty-four and with your head full of nonsense, have not half as much idea of what will suit you as I have. But don’t imagine, Gilly, that I would tie you up to someone for whom you feel the least degree of dislike! You cannot have failed to notice that your aunt and I have taken every opportunity of inviting the Ampleforths to Sale. I have encouraged you to visit them, and you have not been backward in accepting invitations to Ampleforth. I have made it my business to observe you narrowly, and I own that I shall be surprised to learn that you are wholly indifferent to Lady Harriet.”

The Duke grasped the back of a chair. He looked even paler than was natural in him, and acutely unhappy. “No, indeed! I have the greatest regard—She has always been most amiable—But marriage—!”

“Come, Gilly!” said Lord Lionel, a little impatiently, “you do not mean to tell me that you had never considered the question! You knew very well that the matter was arranged!”

“Yes,” the Duke said, in a hollow tone. “Yes, I did know. Only I hoped—I thought—”

“Well, and what did you think and hope?”

“I don’t know,” said the Duke helplessly. “Only that perhaps something would occur—or some other man offer—or—or that it might not be quite yet!”

His uncle looked shrewdly at him. “Have you a tendre for some other female, Gilly?” he asked.

The Duke shook his head.

“Well, I thought you had not, for you have never been in the petticoat-line, but you need not scruple to tell me so if I have been mistaken.” He waited, but the Duke only shook his head again. “Then what is the matter? Be open with me, I beg of you!”

The Duke took out his handkerchief, and pressed it to his lips. “I hardly know. I do not mean to say anything in Harriet’s disparagement! I have always been excessively attached to her, ever since we were children. She is everything that is amiable and obliging. Indeed, she is all compliance and good-nature, and is very pretty besides, but—but I had thought that when I came to marry I should choose awife for myself, a lady for whom I felt—with whom I might be in love, sir!”

“Oho! Here is a high flight!” said his uncle, rather amused. “And where is this fine lady?”

“I have not met one. I—”

“I am happy to hear it, for if any one thing is more to be depended on than another is that she would be quite ineligible! We have all our youthful fancies, Gilly, but it will not answer to be fashioning our lives on them. Now, you are not a schoolboy. You have been about the world a little: I took care that you should do so. You have been presented at Court, you have taken your seat in the House, you have travelled, you have had a season in London. Had you formed an attachment for some female it would not have surprised me in the least, and had your affections become fixed upon an eligible object you would not have found me unreasonable. But although you have met any number of young females of ton, none has succeeded in capturing your fancy. I do not feel that in urging you to come to the point with Ampleforth I am tying you up in matrimony before you have had time to know your own mind.”

“Do you mean that I shall never feel a—a stronger degree of attachment for a female than—than—”

“My dear Gilly, this is being foolish without permission! In plain terms, the sort of passion you have in mind has little to do with marriage. I grant that to be obliged to live with a woman whom you held in aversion would be a sad fate, but we need not consider that. You own that you are not indifferent to Lady Harriet. For a female, I believe her to have a superior understanding. Her disposition is amiable, and if you mean to object that there is a want of spirits in her I would point out to you that you have very odd humours yourself, and would find less rational comfort with a woman of more vivacity than with a quiet girl who would, I am persuaded, partake of many of your sentiments, and study to please you.”

“Oh, yes, yes!” interrupted Gilly. “But—”

Lord Lionel held up his hand. “No, listen to what I have to say to you, my boy! You think I do not enter into your feelings upon this occasion, but you are mistaken. I shall be plain with you. In Lady Harriet you will not find yourself saddled with a wife who will expect more from you than you are inclined to give. She is a very well brought-up girl; and while, on the one hand, I am satisfied that she will conduct herself, as Duchess of Sale, with propriety and discretion, she will not expect you to be always at her side. If you choose to mount a mistress, she will know how to look the other way, and you will not be obliged to face the reproaches which might be levelled at you by a woman of lesser breeding. In short, you may be assured of a well-conducted household with an amiable woman at its head, and may indulge what romantic fancies you please out of it.”

“Do you suppose, sir,” said Gilly, in an extinguished tone, “that it is with such sentiments as these that Harriet thinks of marriage with me—or—or with another?”

“I have been acquainted with Augusta Ampleforth any time these twenty years,” responded Lord Lionel readily, “and “I entertain no fears that Harriet has been allowed to fill her head with romantical stuff and nonsense. I daresay Lady Ampleforth may have some faults—”

“I have always thought her the most unfeeling woman I have ever met!” the Duke said.

“Well, well, now you are in your high ropes again! She is an ambitious woman, but she has a great deal of common-sense, after all!”

The Duke released the chairback, and took a turn about the room. He was evidently agitated, and his uncle allowed him to walk about for a few minutes before saying: “If you dislike it so very much, Gilly, you should have told me of it earlier. To draw back at this late date will be as bad as to declare off.”

The Duke turned a startled face towards him. “Oh, no, surely not!”

“It has been understood between the two families for some years, and from what I hear the announcement of your engagement is pretty widely expected.”

The Duke looked quite horrified. “But it cannot be! I have never offered never said a word to Harriet, or given anyone the least reason to suppose that my affections had become fixed!”

“My dear boy, in our world these affairs are generally known. Ampleforth has refused one offer for Harriet’s hand already, and I have little doubt that her ladyship will have dropped a hint or two abroad. It would be a great piece of folly to pretend that you are not a splendid matrimonial prize, Gilly, so we will not indulge ourselves with any humbug about that. In fact, except for Devonshire, who must be nearing thirty by now and seems to be a settled bachelor—besides he is extremely deaf—I do not know of one to equal you. Depend upon it, Augusta Ampleforth will not have been able to resist the temptation of telling her friends—in the strictest confidence, of course!—that she has such large expectations for her daughter. She must be the envy of her acquaintance!”

The Duke passed a hand through his fair locks. “I had no idea of this! Do you tell me that the Ampleforths—Harriet—have been expecting me to declare myself?”

“Oh, well, no, I do not say that,” replied Lord Lionel. “In fact, I told Ampleforth I would not have you established too early in life. Your health was too uncertain, and I wished you to have time to look about you before making your choice.”

“My choice!” Gilly ejaculated. “It seems I have none at all, sir!”

“Yon have certainly made none,” said his uncle dryly.

There was a defeated silence. After a few moments, Gilly said: “I do not know what to say. I must see Ampleforth, and—and Harriet too. Until I am persuaded that she does indeed expect me to offer—Well, I must see her!”

“Not before you have spoken with her father!” exclaimed Lord Lionel.

“Oh, no!” Gilly said wearily.

“There is no need for you to be in a hurry,” said Lord Lionel. “I believe the Ampleforths are in London at present, but they will be removing into the country at any moment now, I should suppose. Ampleforth is bound to invite you to one of his battues, and you may then—”

“No, no, I would rather by far visit him in town!” Gilly said. “I had been thinking that I would go up to see my cousin. If you do not object, sir, I will do so.”

“Object! Pray, why should you always be supposing that I may object to what you wish to do, Gilly,” demanded Lord Lionel. “But you will find London very thin of company at this season, and I own I do not like the fogs for you, and they will soon be starting, you know. However, if you like to go for a few days it can very well be arranged. I will send an express to Scriven, to warn him to have Sale House in readiness for you. Romsey may accompany you, and—”

“I should like to go alone—and to an hotel!” said the Duke desperately.

“Alone and to an hotel!” repeated his uncle, thunderstruck. “Next I shall be told that you would like to travel to town on the stage-coach!”

“No, I don’t wish to travel on a stage-coach, but I do not want Romsey!”

Lord Lionel eyed him speculatively. “Now, what mischief are you up to, Gilly?” he asked, not displeased. “Do you mean to go raking in town?”

The Duke smiled rather perfunctorily. “No, sir, but I find Romsey very tedious, and I am very sure he will find me a dead bore, for I mean to see a good deal of Gideon, and you know that they could never agree! And I thought I might shoot at Manton’s, and look in at Tatt’s besides, and that sort of thing is not in Romsey’s line at all.”

“No, very true,” agreed Lord Lionel. “So you mean to buy another horse, do you? What is it you want? Something showy to lionize a bit, eh? You had best find out Belper, and desire him to go with you. Not that I mean to say you are not able to judge a horse for yourself, but Belper can advise you.”

The Duke was too thankful to have escaped the company of his clerical tutor to jeopardize his position by demurring at having his other bear-leader thrust upon him. Captain Belper might override him in the matter of choosing a horse, but he was not likely to moralize, and he would not be staying under the same roof as his erstwhile pupil, and so would not be able to keep his movements under strict surveillance.

“You will tell Scriven to draw on Child’s for whatever money you may require,” said Lord Lionel. “No need to trouble yourself about that. But as for staying in an hotel, certainly not, Gilly! I would not vouch for the way they air the sheets even at the Clarendon, and when yon have a very good house of your own it would be the height of absurdity not to use it. Borrowdale may go to London ahead of you—”

“I do not mean to entertain largely. Should Borrowdale not remain with you, sir?” said the Duke.

“We shall do very well with the under-butler. Naturally Borrowdale and Chigwell go with you. You must not blame me for keeping only a skeleton-staff at Sale House, Gilly. While you were under age I should not have considered it proper to squander your fortune in keeping up several establishments as they of course must be kept up when you are married. And you have lived so little in London that it hardly seemed worth while—But that must all be looked into presently. And that puts me in mind of something else! You  need not discuss the marriage settlements with Ampleforth, you know. He will not expect it of you. You are of age, but you will do very much better to leave all such matters in my hands.”

“Yes,” said the Duke.

“I have nothing to say against your being with your cousin: indeed, I hope you will see as much of him as you may, but do not let yourself be drawn into that military set, boy! Gideon is older than you, and can be trusted to keep the line, but there are some fast fellows amongst them, such as I would not wish to see you associating with too freely. And you never know where that kind of society may lead you! Park-saunterers, and half-pay officers, hanging out for invitations: toad-eaters of that style! It will not do for you by any means.”

“No,” said the Duke.

“And if you take my advice, Gilly, you will be a little on your guard with Gaywood!” further admonished his lordship. “I hear that he is being very wild, and if once he gets it into his head that you are to marry his sister I should own myself very much astonished if he did not try to borrow money from you, or some such thing. I do not mean to be dictating to you, mind! But if he tries to introduce you to one of these pernicious gaming-houses, do not go with him!”

“No,” said the Duke.

“Well,” said his lordship, glancing at the clock, “I do not think there is anything more I wish to say to you at present, and I see that Borrowdale will be bringing in the tea-tray in a few minutes. We had better go back to join your aunt.” He nodded graciously at his nephew, and added, a little inaccurately, but in great good-humour: “We have had a comfortable prose together, have we not?”

Chapter III

Four days later, the Duke of Sale set out from Sale Park, in the Midlands, for London, driving in his own chaise, with liveried postilions, and outriders to protect his person and his chattels from possible highwaymen. He was followed by his valet, in a second coach piled high with baggage; and preceded by his steward, his butler, his head groom, and several underlings, all of whom were considered by his uncle and his steward to be absolutely necessary to his comfort. Upon the day following his decision to visit the Metropolis, a servant had been sent post to London, to warn his agent of his approaching arrival. The man had carried with him a letter addressed by Lord Lionel to one Captain Horace Belper, half-pay officer, desiring this gentleman to render his Grace all the advice and assistance of which he might be thought to stand in need, so that whatever plans the Duke might have entertained of escaping a visit from the Captain were foiled at the outset. He had been seen off by his uncle, his aunt, his Chaplain, and his old nurse. His aunt and his nurse had confined their parting counsel to reminders to him to take James’s Powders on the least suspicion of internal disorder; to beware of damp socks, and over-rich foods; and not to hesitate to call in that eminent physician, Dr. Baillie of Grosvenor Street, if he should chance to take a chill. His Chaplain recommended him not to miss the opportunity of attending a forthcoming lecture at the Royal Society on Developments of the Nebular Hypothesis, recently advanced by the Marquis de Laplace. His uncle, having testily informed his other well wishers that no young man setting forth for London on a visit of pleasure wished to receive a clutter of such foolish advice, said that he was to beware of French hazard, not to play billiards except in select company, or roulette in any company at all, and to make a point of visiting his dentist.

Fortified by this send-off, and aware that he had at least one person in his train who would do what lay in his power to persuade him to follow out all the more disagreeable orders laid upon him, the Duke left Sale Park, a prey to dejection, and a great many rebellious thoughts.

For the first half of the journey, he indulged his fancy by forming several impossible schemes for shocking and confounding his relatives, but as soon as the absurdity of these struck him he began to be amused at himself, and his ill-humour, never very durable, lifted. He might chafe at his uncle’s domineering ways, but he could not be angry with him. He thought it must indeed have been a wearing task to have reared such an unpromising specimen as himself, and for perhaps the hundredth time resolved that it should not be a thankless task as well. Lord Lionel might have been, in the past, a severe guardian; he might cling to strict, old-fashioned ideas, and insist on having these conformed to; he might often have been over-anxious, and have irked his ward with restrictions and prohibitions; but the Duke knew well that he had acted throughout on the highest principles, and had for him an affection perhaps as deep as for his own son. He had certainly taken far greater care of him, and shown him more partiality. It was Gideon who had received the blame for any boyish escapade—with a certain amount of justice, reflected the Duke, smiling  to himself, as he recalled various instances of his elder and more enterprising cousin’s exploits. Gideon was sent to Eton, but Lord Lionel dared not expose his sickly nephew to the rigours of public school life, and engaged for him a resident tutor, and any number of visiting instructors, from a French dancing-master to a Professor in the Art of Self-Defence. It had been solicitude, not mistrust, which had prompted him to send Gilly up to Oxford under the aegis of Mr. Romsey, and Gilly had most unfortunately taken a chill which (owing, his lordship was convinced, to neglect) had developed into an inflammation of the lungs which had nearly carried him off. There could be no question after that of sending him up to Oxford alone.

Only his obstinate conviction that no gentleman who had not spent a few years on the Continent could be considered to be more than half-educated had prevailed upon Lord Lionel to take the hazardous risk of exposing his nephew, upon his coming down from Oxford, to the dangers of travel. But the long war with France having terminated in the glorious battle of Waterloo (in which action Gideon had sustained a wound that caused his father no particular anxiety), the Continent was once more open to English travellers, and Lord Lionel steeled himself to send Gilly on a tour which should conform as nearly as possible to the Grand Tours of his own young days. With this end in view, he engaged Captain Belper to share with Mr. Romsey the duties and responsibilities of bear-leading the Duke through France, Italy, and such parts of Germany as had not been ravaged by war.

The Duke was well aware that in choosing Captain Belper to instruct him in all manly exercises Lord Lionel had meant to place him in the charge of one who, while old enough to hold authority over him, should not be too old or to staid to be a companion to him. Unfortunately, the quiet young nobleman found that he had little in common with the bluff soldier, sometimes came near to disliking him, and never accorded him more than the gentle courtesy he used towards Mr. Romsey. He had spent two years abroad, and although these had not been altogether enjoyable they had certainly done much to improve the state of his health. He wondered sometimes how any two persons could have been prevailed upon to undertake the task of following out the conflicting orders laid upon Mr. Romsey and Captain Belper by Lord Lionel. He commanded them to indulge any reasonable wish their charge might express; he warned them to teach my lord Duke to study Economy, and on no account to keep him short of money; he forbade them to coddle him, but instructed them to discover the name and direction of the best doctor in any town they might chance to visit, never to allow my lord to play tennis or to ride after dinner, or to neglect to change his clothes after taking exercise. They were to encourage him to mingle freely in society, but they were to remove instantly from any town in which he seemed to be in danger of forming acquaintances not of the highest ton. He was to be initiated into the mysteries of gambling, but kept away from the Palais Royale. They were to remember that he was not a schoolboy but a young man; and they were to keep his lordship informed of every detail of their tour.

On the whole, reflected the Duke, they had not managed so very ill. Mr. Romsey had been the more zealous to conform to my lord’s instructions, but Captain Belper had been the better guide for a young gentleman setting foot on a foreign shore for the first time. And since they were mutually antagonistic, and very jealous of each other besides, their charge had not experienced much difficulty in winning the support of one of them when he wished to run counter to the other’s judgment.

Upon his return from his travels, the Duke had been a good deal taken aback by his uncle’s proposal to install Mr. Romsey as Chaplain at Sale. He did not dislike his tutor, but he had certainly hoped to be rid of him at last, and had supposed that one of the many livings in his gift would be bestowed on him. But Lord Lionel said that none of these was vacant, and that when old Mr. Gunnerside, who had been Chaplain for so many years, had died, he had purposely kept the post free, so that Romsey might fill it in reward for the years of his faithful services. “You would not wish to be ungrateful, Gilly,” had said his lordship.

No, Gilly had not wished to be ungrateful, and Mr. Romsey had got his Chaplaincy, and perhaps, in the course of a few more years, he might forget that his patron had once been his pupil. “For God’s sake, Adolphus, give that prosy old fool a set-down!” had begged his cousin Gideon.

But the Duke did not like giving set-downs to persons who wished him nothing but good, and had too much sensibility to be anything but courteous to those whose situation in life obliged them to accept without retort the snubs of their patrons.

“Adolphus, you cannot continue to employ such an antiquated valet as Nettlebed!” expostulated Gideon. “Pension him off, child, pension him off!”

“I cannot!” said the Duke despairingly. “It would break his heart!”

“Can you never bring yourself to hurt anyone’s feelings, my little one?” asked Gideon, with his crooked smile.

“Not the feelings of people who are attached to me,” answered Gilly simply.

“Then there is no hope for you!” said his cousin.

Gilly was unhappily inclined to believe him.

And now it appeared that there was another person to be added to the list of those whose feelings the Duke could not bring himself to wound. He did not know whether his intended bride was fond of him, but she was gentle, and shy, and, if his uncle were to be believed, she was depending upon him to make her a Duchess. The Duke had not been made a member of various clubs, and participated in a London season, without assimilating certain social facts. He had very little doubt that Lady Harriet’s chances of securing him for a husband were being freely betted upon at White’s, and to blast all her hopes, to set her up to be the butt of every ill-natured wit in town, would, he realized, be conduct wholly unbefitting a gentleman.

His mood of dejection deepened. Lying back in one corner of his chaise, his eyes on the bobbing forms of the postilions, he tried to think about Lady Harriet, and found it difficult. She had been so very correctly brought-up, had been of late years so zealously chaperoned, that he could not feel that he knew very much about her. There had been a great deal of intercourse between his family and hers; she had very often stayed at Sale Park, or at Cheyney, his house near Bath; and when they had been children he had liked her very well—better, in fact, than the more assertive children of his acquaintance. He still liked her very well, but the easy intercourse they had once enjoyed had latterly dwindled, perhaps from his own consciousness of the future laid down for them both, perhaps from the lady’s increasing shyness. He had squired her to the Opera, and danced with her at Almack’s; he found it easier to talk to her than to any other lady of his acquaintance; but she was not the bride of his independent choice, and although he had no very clear idea of what this imaginary damsel might be like, he felt sure that she did not resemble poor little Harriet.

But since he knew, naturally, that he must marry a lady of impeccable lineage, he was forced to own that Harriet would suit him decidedly better than any other marriageable young female of his set. Only it was all very dull; and without having the least ambition to many to disoblige his family, as the saying was, he did wish that he could have found a wife for himself, and that not a lady whom he had known from his cradle.

He wondered what it would have been like not to have been born in the purple, but to have been some quite unimportant person—not of too lowly a degree, of course, for that would certainly have been uncomfortable. He might have been obliged to live in Thatch End Cottages, for instance, with a leaking roof; or have been snapped up by the press gang; or even, perhaps (since he had always been undersized) have become the slave of a chimney-sweep. It was undoubtedly better to be the seventh Duke of Sale than a sweep’s apprentice, but he was much inclined to think that to have been plain Mr. Dash, of Nowhere in Particular, would have been preferable to either of these callings.

He began to picture the life of plain Mr. Dash, and was still lost in a pleasant, if slightly ill-informed, reverie when his chaise swept into the forecourt of his house in Curzon Street.

He came down to earth with a thud. Mr. Dash inhabited one of those cosy little terrace houses in a quiet corner of the town, and when he returned to his dwelling after a convivial evening spent with his cronies, playing French hazard, and getting his feet wet, he let himself into his house with his own key, and found no one at all who cared a button where he had been, or what he had been doing. None of his servants had ever known his father. In fact, he had very few servants: just a cook, and a housemaid or two, supposed the Duke, and—stretching a point—possibly a groom to look after his horses. Stewards, butlers, footmen, and valets were encumbrances unknown to Mr. Dash. Nor had he any relatives. Or had he one or two cousins? The Duke could not make up his mind on this point, for although the right style of cousin would undoubtedly be a comfort to Mr. Dash, cousins carried uncles in their wake, and Mr. Dash had no uncles—not even an uncle who lived a very long way from London, and never stirred out of his own house. And, thought the Duke, warming to his theme, Mr. Dash had no Chaplain, and no agent; no tradition to uphold; no dignity to maintain.

It was at this moment that the Duke returned to earth. His chaise had drawn up, and he found himself looking, not at a cosy little house in a terrace, but at the imposing portico of Sale House. As he blinked at it, the great doors were opened by unseen hands, his butler’s portly form appeared; and two footmen and the porter came down the steps to open the door of the chaise, let down the steps, remove the rug from across his Grace’s knees, and assist his Grace to alight. They were followed by Mr. Chigwell, the steward, who kept a sharp-eye on their movements, and was the first to offer a respectful welcome to his Grace.

The Duke began to laugh.

The elder of the two footmen, who figured on Mr. Scriven’s account-books as “the Duke’s footman,” continued to stand with his arm crooked for his master to lean upon as he descended from the coach, and his face rigidly impassive; but the younger footman found the Duke’s low laughter so infectious that he so far forgot himself as to grin in sympathy. Mr. Chigwell, himself a trifle startled, made a mental note of this, and silently rehearsed the words of stern reproof he would presently utter.

The Duke picked up his ebony cane, ducked his head to avoid knocking his tall, curly-brimmed beaver against the roof of the chaise, and jumped lightly down, ignoring both the steps, and the proffered arm. Mr. Chigwell and the porter both surged forward to prevent a possible fall, uttering in shocked accents: “Your Grace!”

“Oh, don’t, pray!” besought the Duke, in a shaking voice. “You will set me off again!”

Mr. Chigwell bowed politely but in a good deal of bewilderment. He said doubtfully: “I am glad to see your Grace in spirits. Will your Grace enter the house? You will be tired after the journey, I make no question. Refreshments have been laid out for your Grace in the Blue Saloon.”

“Thank you,” said the Duke.

He trod up the steps, smiled mechanically at Borrowdale, who bowed him in, and found that three more persons were waiting to welcome him. These were the groom of the chambers, the agent-in-chief, and a stalwart, smartly attired gentleman, who darted forward with his hands held out, exclaiming joyfully: “My dear, dear lord! You must let me be amongst the first to bid you welcome to London! How do you do? But I can see for myself that you are in good health!”

All desire to laugh abruptly left the Duke. He halted dead on the threshold, staring up in dismay into the florid countenance that loomed before him. Then, as he recollected himself, he blushed faintly, and held out his hand, saying, with a little stammer: “F-forgive me! I did not know you had been informed of my coming to town. It is excessively obliging in yon to have come to meet me, Captain Belper.”

“Why, I could not keep away, my dear Lord!” the Captain said, warmly shaking his hand. “I had the news from your good uncle, and excellent news I found it. I have not set eyes on you since I know not when! But come in out of the draught, sir! You see, I do not forget your old weakness! We must have no sore throats to spoil your visit to the Metropolis.”

“Thank you, I am very well,” the Duke said, disengaging his hand, and turning to bestow it upon the agent.

Mr. Scriven, a middle-aged man in a neat black suit, bowed very low over it, and said that it was a happiness to him to see his Grace. He hoped that everything would be found to be in readiness at Sale House, and begged his Grace to pardon any shortcomings. “Your Grace must know that we have not a full staff of servants here at present,” he said. “And I own that I am not perfectly happy in the Chief Confectioner.” His grave face relaxed into a smile. “But your Grace did not give me very long warning of this visit!”

“I am sure I shall do very well,” said the Duke. “I did not mean to put you to a deal of trouble. I daresay I could have been tolerably comfortable without a Chief Confectioner.”

Everyone realized that the Duke had uttered a witticism, so those who social status permitted them to laugh, did so, in a discreet way; and Mr. Scriven said that he hoped his Grace would not find his house to be quite so ill-prepared as that. He then added that he should hold himself in readiness to attend upon his Grace as soon as he should be needed, and bowed himself away to the set of offices in one wing of the mansion, where he conducted the business-of the Duke’s many estates and large fortune.

The Duke turned to find Borrowdale waiting to assist him to take off his long, multiple-caped driving-coat. He handed his hat, and his gloves, and his cane to his personal footman, allowed Borrowdale to remove his driving-coat, and stood revealed in fawn pantaloons, well-polished Hessian boots, and a blue cloth coat of Weston’s excellent tailoring. As he did not belong to the dandy-set, his shirt-collar points were not excessively high, and his neckcloth, although arranged with propriety, did not aspire to the niceties of the Mail-coach, the Osbaldestone, or the Trône d’Amour. A single fob hung at his waist; he did not carry a quizzing-glass; and except for a plain pearl pin in his tie the only other adornment he wore was the heavy sardonyx signet ring which had belonged to his father. The shank had had to be made smaller to fit his finger, and the ring seemed to be a trifle too large for so delicate a hand, but the Duke was fond of it, and rarely wore any other.

He accompanied Captain Belper into the Blue Saloon, where a fire had been lit, and a table spread with such light refreshments as might be acceptable within a few hours of dinner.

The Captain declined food, but took a glass of Madeira. He said: “Well, and what brings you to town, my lord? Your uncle writes that you mean to buy a horse!”

“Yes, I think I may do that,” replied the Duke.

The Captain lifted quizzical brows. “I think I know you a little too well to stand upon ceremony with you!” he said. “Thought I to myself, Aha! that is a tale for Lord Lionel! Is he still as—careful, shall we say?—as ever?”

“Oh, yes! But I need a new hunter,” replied the Duke tranquilly.

“You know I shall be happy to give you my advice. It will quite bring back old times. And for the rest you mean to do a little junketing about the town, eh? But the high ton parties are at an end, I fancy. Everyone is gone out of town.”

“I hope to see something of my cousin.”

“Of course! he is stationed here! I think I caught sight of him the other day, devilish smart in his regimentals! These Lifeguardsmen! Hyde Park soldiers, we Peninsular men used to call them!” He laughed heartily as he spoke, but as the Duke had heard this pleasantry a good many times before he did not accord it more than a perfunctory smile. The Captain crossed one leg over the other, with the air of one who had no immediate intention of removing, and said: “Well, my lord, and what is the news with you? I did not see you at Egham races, although they tell me Lord Lionel was there. I was sorry to have missed the chance of paying my compliments to him.”

“Yes, my uncle was staying at Oatlands. He does so every year.”

“But still does not take you along with him!”

“I was in Yorkshire.”

“I should have known it indeed! You would not miss the grouse-shooting, I’ll wager! I daresay you would not have been amused as well at Oatlands: nothing but whist, and the company rather elderly nowadays. Très polissons, moreover: not at all what his lordship would wish for you!” He drank some of his wine, and set the glass down on the table at his elbow. “Well, you are wanting to hear all the town-gossip, I expect. There is very little to tell you. The old Queen seems to have recovered from the spasm she suffered in the spring. They say it was provoked by hearing that the Duchesses of Cambridge and Cumberland had met and embraced. Her physicians thought her rage would have carried her off! Then we had Clarence’s marriage in July: a shabby affair! Lord, what laughing-stocks they do make of themselves, the Royal Dukes! Three of them bolting into matrimony helter-skelter, one after the other. Entering for the Heir-to-the-throne Stakes, I call it! No doubt we shall be celebrating three Interesting Events next year. What else is there to tell you? Upon my word, I know of no particular tit-bit of scandal! The Regent drives his tilbury in the park every day, with his groom sitting up beside him: it doesn’t take well: the sobersides think he should have more dignity. You did well to stay out of town for the general election: you know Castlereagh got pelted? A bad business: came near to rioting in some parts. But you will have heard all that!”

In this fashion the Captain rattled on until interrupted by Borrowdale, who came into the room to enquire if it would suit his Grace to dine at eight o’clock, or whether he wished to visit a theatre. The Duke had meant to call at his cousin’s chambers that evening, but he knew that the Captain hoped to be asked to dine with him, and he could not bring himself to disappoint him. Upon receiving the invitation, the Captain protested half-heartedly that he was wearing his morning-clothes, but allowed himself to be easily persuaded into remaining. The Duke, feeling that a whole evening of his conversation could not be borne, said that they would dine early, and go to the theatre. This necessitated ordering the town carriage, selecting the play to be seen, and despatching a footman to procure a box—arrangements which the Duke found pompous, and the Captain, who was generally obliged to attend to all such details himself, agreeably luxurious.

They did not part until the Captain had wrung an assignation for the following morning out of the Duke, but a decided hint that they should also spend the afternoon together was countered by the Duke’s saying that he had some calls he must make.

At breakfast next day, the Duke bethought him of his agent, and desired one of the footmen to carry a message to him. Mr. Scriven, who had been expecting the summons, speedily presented himself in the library, bringing with him a formidably bulging brief-case; and the next hour was spent by the Duke in glancing perfunctorily over accounts; listening to suggestions for the improvement of several of his estates; and having it respectfully explained to him why his own ideas could not possibly be put into execution. Mr. Scriven was very kind to him—indeed, almost fatherly; and he said that it was a gratification to him to find his young master taking such a proper interest in his affairs; but he contrived to make him feel very ignorant. The interview ended with his saying that in anticipation of the Duke’s needs he had drawn a cheque on Child’s Bank, and would his Grace care to take all or part of the money into his own charge at once? The Duke thought he would not need more than a hundred pounds for the present, so this was counted out, in bills, and the sovereigns that still seemed so very new and strange; and the Duke went off to Manton’s Shooting Gallery, to meet Captain Belper, Here he did some very pretty shooting at a wafer, and fell in love with a handsome pair of duelling-pistols, which he purchased. The Captain cut several sly jokes about this, affecting to believe that he must have come to London to fight a duel over some unknown Fair One, and offering himself as a second. The Duke received these in good part, and by dint of employing evasive tactics, managed to shake him off without making any definite arrangement for a further meeting. The Captain said he should wait upon him next day; the Duke made plans for leaving his house at an early hour, and not returning to it until late at night.

Chapter IV

An hour later, the Duke had formally offered for Lady Harriet Presteigne’s hand in marriage, and had been accepted.

He had been lucky to have found his future father-in-law at home, he was told. The family was on the point of leaving town, the household, in fact, was in a pucker with the business of packing-up already, for while Lord and Lady Ampleforth, with the younger children, were off to Staffordshire, Lady Harriet was going to pay her annual visit to her grandmother in Bath. If the Duke had come but one day later, he would have found the shutters up, and the knocker off the door.

Lord Ampleforth, who was a kindly, harassed man, generally thought to be under the complete dominance of his wife, pushed matters to a crisis not quite bargained for by the Duke by saying almost at once: “I can guess why you are here, Gilly: I have been having some correspondence with your uncle. But I wish you will consider well, my dear boy! I shall not pretend to you that I do not like the alliance. Indeed, there is none I could like half as well, for setting aside the position my girl would occupy, I know of no one who would, I believe, make her happier. Your poor father was one of my closest friends, too! But do you wish it, my boy? Are you quite sure you have not been pushed into this by your uncle? I know Lionel well! an excellent fellow, and means-nothing but good, but overbearing—very overbearing!”

Taken aback, and at a loss for anything to say, the Duke flushed hotly, and stammered: “No, no! I mean—”

“You see, Gilly,” said Ampleforth, fidgeting about the room, “I am very much attached to you, both for your father’s sake, and for your own, and I should not like to think—Well, I was always very much against arranging such a thing before either of you were out of the nursery! And what I wish to say to you is this! If your heart is not in the business, I would not have you go a step farther in it. You need not regard anything but your own inclination, and I beg of you not to allow yourself to be swayed by considerations that do not matter a button! If expectations have been raised, they were not raised by you. I have always deprecated Harriet’s being encouraged to suppose—But I need not say more upon that head!”

He had certainly said enough. The Duke pulled himself together, and in a composed voice said that he entertained the deepest regard for Lady Harriet, and should think himself fortunate indeed if his suit were accepted.

Doubt and relief struggled for supremacy in Lord Ampleforth’s breast; relief won; he said: “Well! If your mind is set on it, what can I say but that my girl must count herself honoured to receive so distinguishing a proposal? I am sure—that is, I fancy there can be no doubt—But you will wish to hear her answer from her own lips! Do but sit down, Sale, while I discover if my lady is able to see you. I know she will wish to do so, but with the house at sixes and sevens—But I will not keep you waiting above a little while!”

He almost thrust his guest into a chair by the fire, and hurried off in search of his wife. He found her in her dressing-room, in conference with the housekeeper, and surrounded by a litter of bandboxes. She was a handsome woman, dressed in the first style of elegance in a Rutland half-robe, with a striped zephyr shawl, and a somewhat formidable turban. Her nose was high-bridged, and her blue eyes at once penetrating and cold. One glance at her spouse sufficed to make her dismiss the housekeeper; and as soon as this portly dame had curtsied herself out of the room, she said: “Well, Ampleforth? What is it?”

“I have Sale downstairs,” he said. “He has been with me this past half-hour.”

“Sale!” she exclaimed, her eyes narrowing,

“My love, he has made me an offer for Harriet’s hand. He expressed himself with the greatest propriety: I think you would have been pleased to have heard him.”

“I was beginning to think he meant to cry off!” she said, in the outspoken way which always made her lord wince. “So he has offered at last! He could not have chosen a more awkward moment! The drawing-room is under holland covers already, and it is quite out of the question for us to be asking him to dine. We have only the under-cook here.”

“Upon my word, I had thought you would have been glad of the news!” said his lordship, quite astonished.

“Pray do not talk to me in that foolish manner, Ampleforth! You know very well that I am excessively glad of it, but why he might not have made his offer at a more seasonable time I have not the remotest conjecture. We should have held a dress-party, and the announcement should have been made at it. People will think it a shabbily contrived business!”

“You forget, ma’am,” rather feebly suggested his lordship, “that we are still in black gloves. It will not be thought wonderful that we do not—”

“Cousin Albinia, and I know not how many times removed, besides having been as mad as Bedlam for years! I assure you I should not have regarded that! However, it isof no use to repine! The thing is that Sale has been brought up to scratch, and heaven knows I must be thankful for that, for I don’t scruple to tell you, my lord, that I have been fearing Harriet was to be obliged to wear the willow. Where have you put him?”

“He is in my book-room. I said I must first speak with you.”

“Very well, I will come directly. I daresay Harriet dressed all by guess this morning, for we are in such an uproar, with half the servants already gone to Ampleforth!” said the lady, tugging vigorously at the bell-pull. “Do not be loitering here, my lord, I do beg of you, but go back to Sale, and say Harriet will come down presently. Oh, is it you, Mrs. Royston? No, I did not precisely wish for you, but it doesn’t signify! Be good enough to desire Lady Harriet and Miss Abinger to wait on me here directly! Pray, what do you stay for, Ampleforth? Go down to Sale at once, and entertain him until I come!”

The Lady Harriet was discovered to be in the schoolroom, helping to keep her younger sisters amused while the nurse busied herself with, the packing of their many trunks. At a table in the window, the governess, Miss Abinger, was endeavouring to instruct two stout lads in frilled shirts and nankeen pantaloons in the use of the globes. When Lady Ampleforth’s message was delivered by the panting housekeeper, Harriet jumped up from the floor, where she had been sitting, and instinctively put her hands to smooth her soft brown curls. “Mama wants me?” she said in a scared voice. “Oh, what is it, Royston dear?”

The housekeeper beamed at her knowingly. “Ah, that is for her ladyship to tell you, my lady! But what would you say to a lovely young gentleman’s being closeted with your papa?”

Lady Harriet’s large blue eyes dilated; she said faintly: “Oh, no!”

Miss Abinger, a sensible-looking woman in the late thirties, rose from her seat, saying in a commonplace tone: “Lady Harriet will come to her ladyship directly. You will do well to tidy your hair, my dear. Come into your bed-chamber and let me draw a comb through it. You know your mama likes you to be neat in your appearance,”

“Harry, don’t be gone for ever!” begged Lady Maria, a buxom twelve-year-old. “Ten to one it is only one of Mama’s fusses!”

“Oh, hush, love!” Harriet whispered.

“Good gracious, Harry!” exclaimed Lady Caroline, who at sixteen bade fair to resemble her mother very nearly, “you don’t suppose it is Sale, do you?”

Harriet, blushing furiously, ran out of the room. Miss Abinger said severely: “You will oblige me, Caroline, by writing out in your fairest hand, and without blots, fifty times, Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue, keepeth his heart from troubles. ”She waited for a moment to be sure that her pupil dared not venture on any retort, and then followed Lady Harriet out of the room, and down one pair of stairs to a bedchamber at the back of the house.

Here, the abigail who was folding her young mistress’s dresses in silver paper, betrayed by her air of barely suppressed excitement that the rumour that was already running through the house had reached her ears. She greeted the governess with a gasp, and an involuntary question: “Oh, miss, is it true?”

Miss Abinger ignored this impertinence, and trod over to the dressing-table, before which Harriet had seated herself. “You have crushed your gown a trifle, my dear but it will not do to keep your mama waiting, and we must hope that she will not notice it. Let me take that comb!”

Harriet permitted her to remove it from her singularly nerveless grasp. “Oh, Abby, you do not think—?”

“I think your mama will not like it if you do not bestir yourself, Lady Harriet,” replied the governess calmly.

Harriet said, in a helpless way: “No,” and submitted to having her hair combed and tidied. She then rose, and with trembling knees followed her preceptress downstairs to Lady Ampleforth’s dressing-room.

Her ladyship cast one comprehensive glance over her daughter, and exclaimed in exasperated accents: “Exactly so! Your old plain muslin, and I daresay everything packed up already! Well, it will not do! Miss Abinger, oblige me by seeing to it that Lady Harriet changes her dress immediately! The cambric muslin with the double scallop work at the bottom is what she should be wearing, or if that is not readily procurable, the new sprig gown, with the sleeves drawn at the top with coloured ribbons! My Jove, Sale is below, with your papa. You will allow mama to be the first to felicitate you upon the very flattering offer that has been made you!”

“Gilly!” Harriet uttered, in a voice so suspended by surprise as to be barely audible. “Oh, no! surely you must be mistaken, ma’am!”

A look of annoyance seemed to sharpen Lady Ampleforth’s features. “There is no occasion that I know of for these die-away airs, Harriet!” she said. “You are very well aware of your papa’s and my intentions for you!”

“Oh, yes! But I had not supposed—he has never been particular in his attentions—Mama, I did not think Gilly loved me!”

“I can only conclude, Harriet,” said Lady Ampleforth, with a condemnatory glance at Miss Abinger, “that you have been taking novels out of some circulating-library, which is a thing I have never permitted.”

“Oh, no, Mama!” Harriet faltered.

“Then I am at a loss to understand where you can have learnt such trumpery notions, and, I beg you will not make a figure of yourself by mentioning them again! Sale has expressed himself very properly to your papa, and if he and I are satisfied you have surely nothing to cavil at! He is waiting to address you himself. I trust you know your duty well enough to make it unnecessary for me to tell you in what terms you must answer him.”

“Oh, Mama, pray—!”

“Harriet, what is this nonsense?” demanded her ladyship irately. “I will allow it to be a most inconvenient time for Sale to be declaring himself, but so it is always! Men have not the least common-sense! But if you mean to tell me that you hold him in aversion—”

“Oh, no; no!”

“Precisely so! You should be grateful to your papa and to me for having permitted you to become pretty well acquainted with Sale, instead of presenting him to you a complete stranger, as might very often happen in my young days, let me assure you! I did not look for this missishness in you, and I can tell you that it is not at all becoming. You have been a little taken by surprise, and that is forgiveable: I was quite thunderstruck myself. But you will have time to compose your mind while you change your dress, and I am confident you will conduct yourself just as you should. Now, do not be dawdling here any longer, my dear! Bustle about a little, if you please! I shall come up to your bedchamber to fetch you myself in half an hour, and I hope you do not mean to keep me waiting. Miss Abinger, be so good as to accompany my daughter, and to make sure that she is dressed just as she should be! Her maid has no head, not the least in the world!”

“Certainly, Lady Ampleforth,” said Miss Abinger, in her colourless way. “Come, Lady Harriet!”

She laid her hand on Harriet’s trembling arm, and almost propelled her to the door. When she had firmly closed this behind them, she said in a warmer tone: “My dear, try to compose yourself! What is the matter?”

“Oh, Abby, I don’t know!” Harriet replied, in some agitation. “Only I did not look for this, and I do not wish—I do not think—”

“Forgive me, but I had not supposed that you were indifferent to the Duke.”

“Not indifferent, no!” Harriet said, averting her face. “But he—!”

They had reached the half-landing before Miss Abinger replied. She said then: “I believe the Duke entertains feelings of the warmest regard for you, my love. He is a very amiable young man, and one who will not fail to treat you with all the courtesy and consideration one could wish for you. Indeed, I think you are to be envied! I know your mind to be of too nice a tone to care for such things, but you will occupy a position of the first consequence, and you will enjoy great wealth. Reflect that in addition to this you will have a husband who partakes of many of your sentiments, and is, I am persuaded, the model of compliance and good nature.”

“He does not love me,” Harriet said. “It is his uncle’s doing, and Mama’s. I know it, Abby!”

“I shall not dispute with you on that head, my dear Lady Harriet, and I believe it will not serve to discuss it. Yet I must venture to tell you that I do not by any means despair of your happiness in this alliance. You know, it is not commonly the thing for persons in your station in life to make what is called a love-match.”

“No,” Harriet agreed dejectedly.

They had reached the upper floor by this time. As Miss Abinger grasped the door-handle of Harriet’s bedroom, she added deliberately: “You are not always quite at your ease in your home, dear Lady Harriet. I fancy you may be happier in an establishment of your own. But I have said too much, and we shall soon have your mama coming up to fetch you!”

Harriet coloured, but was silent. While Miss Abinger directed the maid to unpack her mistress’s cambric muslin, she waited, looking out of the window between the lace blinds. Her colour faded gradually, and she was able in a few minutes to reply to a chance question with tolerable composure. It was by no means Miss Abinger’s business to dress the hair of her pupils, but she elected to do so, and with so much taste that when Lady Ampleforth came into the room presently she nodded approvingly, and said: “Very well, indeed! I could wish that you had a trifle more countenance, my love, but you look very becomingly. But hold yourself up, if you please! An air of languor can never be pleasing in a girl, remember! Now, if you are ready, we will go downstairs.”

“I am quite ready, Mama.”

Lady Ampleforth preceded her out of the room, but paused at the head of the stairs to take her hand. “There is no need for you to feel the slightest embarrassment, Harriet,” she said kindly. “Sale is a very pretty-behaved young man, and his manners reflect the greatest credit on his upbringing. I only wish your brother had them! I daresay he will do or say nothing to make you blush. Besides, I should not think of leaving you alone together, so have no fears on that score!”

“No, Mama,” said Harriet.

Lord Ampleforth and the Duke were standing in front of the fire in the book-room, conversing in a desultory and  uncomfortable fashion. Lord Ampleforth was looking rather more harassed than before; and half an hour of his future mother-in-law’s brisk, managing talk had so much oppressed the Duke’s spirits that he bore the appearance more of one about to face a severe ordeal than of a hopeful suitor. He directed an anxious, questioning look at Harriet, but she kept her eyes lowered, and did not perceive it.

“Ah, my child!” said Ampleforth, going to meet her. “I think your mama has told you that I have just received a very flattering offer for your hand.” He took it as he spoke, and gave it a fond squeeze. “But I have told Gilly that I will not have you constrained, and you shall give him your own answer.”

He drew her forward; the Duke, miserably tongue-tied, managed to utter a few formal sentences; and Harriet, ready to sink, curtsied, and whispered a reply of which “very much obliged,” and “most truly sensible of the honour,” were the only audible words.

Her father, apparently taking these to mean consent, held out her hand to the Duke, who took it in his own ice-cold one, and kissed it. He said: “You have made me very happy. I beg you to believe that I shall do everything in my power to—to make you happy too, Harriet!”

“No one who knows you could doubt that, Gilly, I am sure!” Ampleforth said. “I don’t scruple to say that you are two very fortunate young persons. I am sure I do not know which of you has the better disposition! Lady Ampleforth, I have something I wish to say to you! We will beg Gilly to excuse us for a minute.”

Her ladyship was so much astonished at having such tactics employed against her that she could think of nothing to say, except what she was too well-bred to say in front of a guest. Her husband was holding open the door, and she saw nothing for it but to leave the room with him. The Duke and his betrothed were left shyly confronting one another.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then the Duke saw how pale Harriet was, and how much her hands trembled, and compassion made him forget his own ill-ease, and he said; “I hope you do not dislike it very much! I shall do my utmost not to give you cause for any unhappiness. You won’t find me exacting, I promise, or—or—”

“No, I do not dislike it,” Harriet answered, in a low voice. “I shall try to be dutiful, and to behave just as you would wish. I—I have always had a—a great regard for you, Gilly.”

“And I for you, dear Harriet,” he responded at once. “I do think we—we may suit very well. It shall not be my fault if we do not.”

She looked up at that. “I hope—oh, I hope it may never be mine! Forgive me! I find myself a little overcome! I had not the expectation—that is, I did not think you were in London, or that—you entertained for me those feelings which—”

She broke off in confusion. He possessed her himself of her hand again. “Indeed, I am excessively attached to you!” he stammered; “I wish you were not going out of town immediately! It must have been my—my earnest endeavour to show you—But I may come to Bath, and you will allow me to squire you to all the dress-balls!” he added, with an attempt at lightness.

A smile trembled on her lips. “Oh, yes! You know how well our steps suit!”

“Yes, indeed! I am sure there is no one I am happier to stand up with, for you never make me feel myself to be such a miserable dwarf of a fellow!”

“Oh, Gilly, how can you? You are no such thing!”

He laughed. “Ah, you should hear my cousin Gideon on that head!”

“You should hear Gaywood!” she retorted, gaining confidence. “He calls me a poor little dab of a creature!”

“Brothers! We shall not care a fig for them, or cousins either!” he said. He saw that she was looking less pale, and ventured to loss her cheek.

Lady Ampleforth came back into the room in time to witness this embrace. Her sharp eyes detected Harriet’s blush, and the way her hand went up as though to clasp the Duke’s coat collar. She said: “Well, I make no doubt you have settled it all between you! It is an unfortunate circumstance that we should be going out of town at this precise moment, but I shall look to see you at Ampleforth, Duke, next month. Harriet must go to Bath: there is no getting out of that, for old Lady Ampleforth expects her, and we must not cast her into one of her pets, you know.”

The young couple fell apart guiltily; constraint descended upon them again; and by the time her ladyship had discussed various convenient dates for the wedding-ceremony, and estimated the length of time it would take her to procure Harriet’s bride-clothes, the Duke was thankful to take his leave.

When he had been bowed out, Lord Ampleforth, who had been observing his daughter narrowly, said: “My dear Harriet, are you quite happy in this engagement? You must not hesitate to tell me if your mind has any misgiving!”

“No, Papa, I am quite happy,” she said.

“Good God, Ampleforth, what can you be thinking of?” exclaimed his wife. “Fray, what more could any girl desire I should like to know? To be Duchess of Sale! That is something indeed! Harriet, I wish you will come up to my dressing-room, for there is a great deal I want to say to you!”

She swept her daughter out of the room, saying as she closed the door: “Your papa has some odd fancies, but I trust I have brought you up to know your duty! It was an awkward business, his calling me out of the room as he did, but I returned to you as soon as I might. Sale looked to be in tolerably good health, I thought.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“He was the sickliest child! I am sure no one thought to see him survive! He is not as well-grown as one could wish, but he is very well made, and has excellent manners. Perhaps he is not precisely good-looking, but there is nothing in his air or countenance to disgust one.”

“I think him very good-looking, Mama,” Harriet said, in a subdued voice.

Lady Ampleforth entered the dressing-room, thrust an empty band-box off a chair, and sat down. “Yes, very likely, my love, and that brings me to what I wish to say to you. Shut the door! Now, sit down, and attend to me a little!” She waited until this command had been obeyed, and then said, twitching her shawl round her shoulders: “I have often observed, Harriet, that you have just a little nonsense in you which will not do. I shall speak frankly to you, and I daresay you may thank me for it one day. I did not quite like to see you hanging so upon Sale, as you were when I came into the book-room just now. You know, my dear child, he will not be looking for you to wear your heart upon your sleeve: in fact, I can think of nothing more likely to disgust him. I must surely have told you a dozen times that a lady of quality must not behave as though she were Miss Smith of Heaven knows where! I shall never forget my own dear mama’s telling me how the Duchess of Devonshire—the first wife of the late Duke, I mean!—actually sat down upon his Grace’s knee once, when she was but a bride! And her mortification when he repulsed her! It quite makes one blush to think of it. But I believe Lady Spencer—she was one of those blue-stocking women, you know!—brought her daughters up in the oddest fashion! I should not like to think that you, my dear Harriet, would so far forget yourself. Such manners may do very well for parvenues, but whatever your brother Gaywood may have told you, they will not do for you. Sale has not been reared in this modern style, which permits all kinds of license, and, depend upon it, he will expect his wife to conduct herself with fitting decorum. It has been very justly observed, my love—I forget by whom—that if you meet with tenderness in private from your husband, you will have no cause for complaint.”

Harriet clasped her hands tightly together in her lap. “Mama,” she said, fixing her eyes on Lady Ampleforth’s face, “may not a lady of quality— love? ”

Her ladyship laughed. “As to that, my dear, I daresay she is no harder-hearted than the rest of her sex! But she must always be discreet, and I cannot too strongly impress upon you that nothing of that nature must be thought of until you have presented your husband with an heir! You must never give your parents cause to blush for you, Harriet, and I am sure you will not, for you are a good girl, and you know what is due to your position.”

“Oh!” said Harriet faintly, lifting a hand to her hot cheek. “I did not mean that! Mama—were you not in love with Papa when you married him?”

“I was a great deal too young to know anything of the matter. He was presented to me by my parents: I doubt if I had clapped eyes on him above half a dozen times in my life. But I became very sincerely attached to him, as I hope you may do to Sale. But be upon your guard, my child! You have a romantical disposition, I am afraid, and you are a great deal too fond of showing when you feel a strong partiality for anyone. And that, you know, may lead you into jealousy, which will never do! A man may have his chères-amies: they do not concern his wife. She must turn a blind eye towards such little affaires. ”

“Perhaps,” said Harriet, turning away her face, “he may welcome caresses from his chères-amies! ”

“Very likely, my love. It is something I am happy to think neither you nor I can know anything about. A man of Sale’s breeding will expect a different style of conduct of his wife, that I can vouch for! Remember it, Harriet!”

“Yes, Mama,” said Harriet unhappily.

Chapter V

The Duke, returning to Sale House, spent an unprofitable half-hour, trying to draft an advertisement for the Gazette. He gave it up finally, exclaiming aloud: “It seems I need a private secretary besides all the rest!”

The door into the library opened. “Your Grace called?” said his footman.

The Duke stared at him in gathering wrath. “Were you standing outside the door?” he demanded.

The man looked quite scared. “Yes, your Grace!”

“Then don’t do it!”

“No, your Grace! I beg your Grace’s pardon! I thought your Grace had called!”

“I did not!”

“No, your Grace!” said the footman, much discomposed, and preparing to bowhimself out again.

“When I need you, I will ring for you,” said the Duke. “At this present I want nothing! At least—Yes, I do! If Mr. Scriven should not have left the house, desire him to come to me, if you please!”

“Yes, your Grace!”

It seemed that Mr. Scriven had not left the house, for in a very few minutes he presented himself in the library. He found the Duke sitting at the big carved desk, biting the end of a quill, and regarding with dissatisfaction a scrawled sheet of paper. Several screwed-up balls of paper cast in the direction of the fireplace bore witness to frustrated literary endeavour.

“You wished to see me, my lord?” said Mr. Scriven, advancing into the room.

The Duke looked up, a boyishly rueful smile in his eyes. “I can do not the least thing for myself, Scriven!” he said. “Here have I been wasting I know not how long trying to write the simplest notice, and making the sorriest work of it!”

“You know you may depend upon me, my lord, to do anything for you that you desire,” said Mr. Scriven, in a soothing voice. “May I know what it is that is giving you so much trouble?”

“Merely the notice of my engagement for the Gazette! You would say a simple matter, but only see what a botch I have made of it!”

Mr. Scriven had been moving towards the desk, but at these words he halted. “Your engagement, my lord!”

“Yes, to the Lady Harriet Presteigne. It must be announced, you know, and I shall be very much obliged to you if you will draft a suitable notice for me.”

“May I say, my lord Duke,” said Mr. Scriven, deeply moved, “that there is no task you could lay upon me which I could undertake with more gratification? I hope your Grace will permit me to offer my sincerest felicitations upon this most happy event!”

“Thank you: you are very good.”

“I shall take advantage, my lord, of my long association with the House of Sale, to say that nothing could afford those who have your interests at heart greater satisfaction than thus intelligence. And I venture to say, my lord, that there is no one amongst your dependants who has not your interests at heart.”

“Thank you!” said the Duke again, startled, but a little touched.

“Your Grace may safely leave this matter in my hands,” said Mr. Scriven. “The notice shall be sent immediately to all the society papers: I shall attend to it myself. May I enquire when the Happy Date is to be?”

“I do not precisely know. In the spring, I think: nothing is fixed yet!”

Mr. Scriven bowed. “We shall have to see to the refurnishing of the Duchess’s apartments,” he said. “In fact, there will be a great many details to be attended to, my lord. You may rely on me!”

The Duke, who felt that he had listened to enough plans for his marriage for one day, said hastily that he was sure of it, but that there was time and to spare. Mr. Scriven thereupon bowed again, and went off to enjoy himself very much in drafting an advertisement in terms grandiloquent enough to satisfy his sense of what was due to his noble employer’s dignity.

The Duke, who had previously ascertained that his cousin was on guard-duty that day, thought that he might perhaps be dining at White’s, and determined to seek him there. He did not succeed, however, in leaving the house without encountering a good deal of opposition, first from his valet, who took it amiss that he did not mean to change his pantaloons for knee-breeches and silk stockings; then from Borrowdale, who had not supposed that his Grace meant to dine from home, and thought that it looked like rain; and lastly from Chigwell, who, forbidden to send a message to the stables, was horrified, and exclaimed: “But your Grace will have the carriage!”

“I do not need it; I am only going to White’s,” replied the Duke, taking his cane and gloves from his footman’s hands.

“Your Grace will not go on foot, and alone! Only let me call a chair!”

“Chigwell, I am not a child, nor shall I melt for a drop or two of rain!” said the Duke.

“No, indeed, your Grace, but they say the town abounds with pickpockets, and street-robbers! I am sure his lordship would desire you to take a chair, and a linkboy!”

“I shall take neither, however.”

Chigwell and Borrowdale both looked very much upset. “But, your Grace, you will be very much more comfortable in your carriage!” protested Chigwell. “It can be brought round in a trice, and—”

“ No! ” said the Duke, with sudden and unaccustomed violence.

They fell back, and the porter, who had been standing all the time by the door thought well of opening it.

“As your Grace wishes!” said Chigwell feebly. “At what hour will your Grace be returning?”

“I have not the smallest notion,” said the Duke, drawing on his gloves.

“No, your Grace. Quite so! And your Grace would not wish to have the carriage call for you—?”

“I would not!” said the Duke, and ran down the steps into the forecourt, leaving his faithful henchmen to stare after him in great surprise, and no little perturbation.

He did not find his cousin at White’s, but just as he was ascertaining from the porter that Captain Ware had not been seen in the club that day, Viscount Gaywood walked in, and instantly pounced upon him. “Sale! By God, I was in half a mind to call at your place! My dear fellow, how do you do? I have just heard the news! Never more glad of anything in my life! Come and dine with me!”

Lord Gaywood, who was tall, lanky, and a great rattle, bore little resemblance to his sister Harriet, but had a beak-like nose that brought Lady Ampleforth forcibly to mind. He was said to be a severe trial to his parents, and had certainly occupied his adult years in tumbling in and out of a great many scrapes. He swept the Duke upstairs to the coffee-room, saying cheerfully: “Well, this is a capital go, old fellow! But what a complete hand you are! I was ready to swear you were not hanging out for a wife yet awhile! Why, I don’t believe you ever so much as gave Harry’s hand a squeeze at hands across!”

“Well, do not shout it to the whole world!” said Gilly.

“Oh, no one ever attends to me!” replied his lordship. “You know, it’s not for me to puff m’sister off, but she’s a devilish good girl, Sale, and deserves her fortune. The shyest thing in nature, mind you, but you’re a trifle in that line yourself! I’m glad you didn’t declare off: don’t mind telling you my mother was thrown into gloom when you left town without coming up to scratch! What a business it is! They will be trying their hands at finding a bride for me next, I daresay. Do you want to buy a horse?”

“Yes, but not one of yours,” said the Duke frankly.

“What do you mean, not one of mine?” demanded his lordship, affronted. “I’ve got a prime bit of blood I wouldn’t mind selling you. Shows off well; complete to a shade!”

“Touched in the wind?” asked the Duke, taking his seat at the table.

“Devil a bit of it! Perfect in all his paces!”

“I may look like a flat, but I’m not such a green one that I’d buy one of your breakdowns, Charlie,” said the Duke.

Lord Gaywood grinned. “Well, it ain’t a breakdown, but I never crossed a greater slug in my life! fit only to carry a churchwarden!”

“Thank you!” said the Duke.

“Oh, well, there’s no saying! he might have taken your fancy! What made you take this bolt to the village, my tulip? You did not come merely to offer for Harriet!”

“That, and to buy a horse—not your horse.”

“Gilly, you skirter! Don’t try to come Tip-Street over me! If you have run away from that devilish uncle of yours, I don’t blame you! The most antiquated old fidget I ever saw! Quite gothic, my dear fellow! I’m frightened to death of him. I don’t think he likes me above half.”

“Not as much,” replied Gilly. “In fact, I think he classes you with park-saunterers, and other such ramshackle persons.”

“No, no, Gilly, upon my word! Always in the best of good ton! ” protested his lordship. “Park-saunterers be damned! I’ll tell you what, my boy! I’ll take you along to a place I know of in Pickering Place after dinner. All the crack amongst the knowing ones, and the play very fair.”

“French hazard? You know I haven’t the least taste for gaming! Besides, I’m going to visit my cousin Gideon.”

Lord Gaywood exclaimed against such tame behaviour, but the Duke remained steady in refusing to accompany him to his gaming-hell, and they parted after dinner, Gaywood crossing the street to Pickering Place, and the Duke going off to Albany, where Captain Ware rented a set of chambers. These were on the first floor of one of the new buildings, and were reached by a flight of stone stairs. The Duke ran up these, and knocked on his cousin’s door. It was opened to him by a stalwart individual with a rugged countenance, and the air and bearing of an old soldier, who stared at him for an instant, and then exclaimed: “It’s your Grace!”

“Hallo, Wragby! is my cousin in?” returned the Duke, stepping into a small hall, and laving his hat and cane down upon the table.

“Ay, that he is, your Grace, and Mr. Matthew with him,” said Wragby. “I’ll warrant hell be mighty glad to see your Grace. I’ll take your coat, sir.”

He divested the Duke of it as he spoke, and would have announced him had not Gilly shaken his head, and walked without ceremony into his cousin’s sitting-room.

This was a comfortable, square apartment, with windows giving on to a little balcony, and some folding doors that led into Captain Ware’s bedchamber. It was lit by candles, a fire burned in the grate, and the atmosphere was rather thick with cigar-smoke. The furniture was none of it very new, or very elegant, and the room was not distinguished by its neatness. To the Duke, who rarely saw as much as a cushion out of place in his own residences, the litter of spurs, riding-whips, racing-calendars, invitation-cards, pipes, tankards, and newspapers gave the room a charm all its own. He felt at his ease in it, and never entered it without experiencing a pang of envy.

There were two persons seated at the mahogany table, at which it was evident they had been dining. One was a fair youth, in a very dandified waistcoat; the other, a big, dark young man, some four years older than the Duke, who lounged at the head of the table, with his long legs stretched out before him, and one hand dug into the pocket of his white buckskins. He had shed his scarlet coat for a dressing-gown, and he wore on his feet a pair of embroidered Turkish slippers. It was easy to trace his relationship to Lord Lionel Ware. He had the same high nose, and stern gray eyes, and something of the same mulish look about his mouth and chin, which made his face, in repose, a little forbidding. But he had also an attractively crooked smile, which only persons for whom he had a fondness were privileged to see. As he looked up, at the opening of the door, his eyes narrowed, and the smile twisted up one side of his mouth. “Adolphus!” he said, in a lazy drawl. “Well, well, well!”

The fair youth, who had been staring a little moodily at the dregs of the port in his glass, started, and looked round, as much as he was able to do for the extremely high and starched points of his shirt-collar. “Gilly!” he exclaimed. “Good God, what are you doing in town?”

“Why shouldn’t I be in town?” said the Duke, with a touch of impatience. “If it comes to that, what brings you here?”

“I’m on my way up to Oxford, of course,” said his cousin. “Lord, what a start you gave me, walking in like that!”

By this time, the Duke had taken in all the glories of his young cousin’s attire, which included, besides that amazingly striped waistcoat, an Oriental tie of gigantic height, a starched frill, buckram-wadded shoulders to an extravagantly cut coat, buttons the size of crown pieces, and a pair of Inexpressibles of a virulent shade of yellow. He closed his eyes, and said faintly: “Gideon, have you any brandy?”

Captain Ware grinned. “Regular little counter-coxcomb, ain’t he?” he remarked.

“I thought you had a Bartholomew baby dining with you,” said Gilly. “Matt, you don’t mean to go up to Oxford in that rig? Oh, my God, Gideon, will you look at his pantaloons? What a set of dashing blades they must be at Magdalen!”

“Gilly!” protested Matthew, flushing hotly. “Because you are never in the least dapper-dog yourself you need not quiz me! It’s the pink of the fashion, bang up to the nines! You should have a pair yourself!”

“Above my touch,” said the Duke, shaking his head. He looked up at Gideon, who had dragged himself out of his chair, and now stood towering above him, and smiled. “Gideon,” he said, with satisfaction. “Oh, I think I was charged with a great many messages for you, but I have forgot them all!”

“Do you mean to tell me, Adolphus, that you have slipped your leash?” demanded Gideon.

“Oh, no!” said Gilly, sighing. “I did think that perhaps I might, but I was reckoning without Belper, and Scriven, and Chigwell and Borrowdale, and Nettlebed, and—”

“Enough!” commanded Gideon. “This air of consequence ill becomes you, my little one! Is my revered father in town?”

“No, I am alone. Except, of course, for Nettlebed, and Turvey, and—But you don’t like me to puff off my state!”

“This,” said Gideon, lounging over to the door, and opening it, “calls for a bowl of punch! Wragby! Wragby, you old rascal! Rum! Lemons! Kettle! Bustle about, man!” He came back to the fire. “Tell me that my parents are well, and then do not let us talk about them any more!” he invited.

“They are very well, but I am going to say a great deal to you about your father. I think I came for that very purpose. Yes, I am sure that I did!”

“You have never given Uncle Lionel the bag?” exclaimed Matthew.

“Oh, no! He saw me off with his blessing, and an adjuration to visit the dentist. I have never yet succeeded in giving anyone the bag,” said Gilly.

Gideon looked at him under his brows. “Hipped, Adolphus?” he said gently.

“Blue-devilled!” replied the Duke, meeting his look.

“What a complete hand you are, Gilly!” said Matthew impatiently. “I only wish I stood in your shoes! There you are, your pockets never to let, everything made easy for you, all the toad-eaters in town ready to serve you, and you complain—”

“Peace, halfling!” interrupted Gideon. “Sit down, Gilly! Tell me all that is in your mind!”

“Too much!” said the Duke, sinking into a chair at the table. “Oh, that reminds me! Would you like to offer me your felicitations? You won’t be quite the first to do so, but—but you won’t care to be backward! I have this day fulfilled the expectations of my family—not to mention those of every busybody in town—and entered upon a very eligible engagement. You will see the notice in the Gazette, presently, and all the society journals. I do hope Scriven will not forget any of these!”

“Oh!” said Gideon. He pitched the butt of his cigar into the fire, and cast another of those shrewd, appraising looks at the Duke. “Well, that certainly calls for a bowl of punch,” he said. “Harriet, eh?”

The Duke nodded.

“I don’t wish to enrage you, my little one, but you have my felicitations. She will do very well for you.”

The Duke looked up quickly. “Yes, of course! What a fellow I am to be talking in such a fashion! Don’t regard it! She is everything that is amiable and obliging.”

“Well, I’m sure I wish you very happy,” said Matthew. “Of course we all knew that you were going to offer for her.”

“Of course you did!” agreed Gilly, with immense cordiality.

“Charlotte has contracted an engagement too,” observed Matthew. “Did you know it? It is to Alfred Thirsk.”

“Certainly I knew it,” replied Gilly. “In fact, I very nearly withheld my consent to the match.”

“Very nearly withheld your consent!” repeated Matthew, staring at him in the liveliest astonishment.

“Well, I had the intention, but, like so many of my intentions, it came to nothing. Your father wrote me a very proper letter, expressing the hope that the alliance met with my approval. Only it does not: not at all!”

Matthew burst out laughing. “Much my father would care! Stop bamming, Gilly!”

“Bamming? You forget yourself, Matt!” Gilly retorted. “Let me tell you that I am the head of our family, and it is time that I learned to assert myself!”

Gideon smiled. “Have you been asserting yourself, Adolphus?”

“No, no, I am not yet beyond the stage of learning! I am so bird-witted, you know, that I can never tell what is asserting myself, and what is putting myself forward in a very pert fashion that will not do at all.”

Gideon dropped a hand on his shoulder, and gripped it, but as Wragby came in just then, with a laden tray, he said nothing. The Duke lifted his own hand to clasp that larger one. “All gammon!” he said jerkily. “I told you I was blue-devilled!”

Gideon smiled down at him in his lazy way, and shook him gently to and fro. “Wretched little snirp!” he said.

“Mackerel-backed dragoon!” retorted the Duke, with an effort at liveliness. “Brew your punch!”

Matthew seized one of the lemons, and sliced it in half, chanting: “ One sour, Two sweet; Four strong, And eight weak! Shall you add a dash of pink champagne to it, Gideon?”

“I shall not,” replied Gideon, releasing the Duke’s shoulder, and beginning to measure out the rum. “Arrack, my child, nothing but arrack!”

“Only rustics use arrack instead of champagne,” said Matthew, in a lofty way, which he instantly regretted.

“Listen to our rasher-of-wind!” Gideon recommended, with a nod at Gilly. “Proceed, Matt! Any more airs of the exquisite to play off?”

Young Mr. Ware’s ready colour surged up again. “No, but it is so! Gilly, you go to all the ton parties! It should be pink champagne, shouldn’t it?”

“Yes, of course, only Gideon has such nip-cheese ways!” responded the Duke, lifting a spoonful of well-pounded sugar from the bowl, and letting it shower back again. “Does Charlotte really wish to marry Thirsk, Matt?”

“Lord, yes, she’s in high gig!” replied Matthew cheerfully.

“Good God!”

“Well, she will have a very creditable establishment, you know! Oh, you are thinking that Thirsk is a bit of a loose-screw! She won’t care for that as long as he don’t spy too closely after her, and I dare swear he won’t, for he’s got a mistress in keeping, and has had for years. At least that’s one of the on-dits of town, and I should think it would be true, would not you?”

“But what a charming match!” said the Duke.

“Oh, well!” said Matthew charitably, “no one could blame my father for nabbling Thirsk, after all! Devilish plump in the pocket, you know, and there’s the title besides, and four more of my sisters to be provided for! As for Charlotte, it’s all very well for you to cavil, Gilly, but you are your own master, and may do as you please. You don’t have to live at Croylake, dangling after my mother, and having to pour tea for a parcel of humbugging Methodies five evenings out of the seven! I can tell you, there’s no bearing it!”

The kettle had boiled by this time; Gideon lifted it from the hob, and poured the sherbet he had brewed in it on to his spirit. A fragrant aroma rose from the bowl. He stirred the mixture, his attention fixed on it. But the Duke, catching the note of bitterness in Matthew’s voice, looked at him rather searchingly. Matthew averted his eyes with a little laugh, and began to boast of Oxford larks.

Gideon, who rarely paid the least heed to him, interrupted his chatter without ceremony. “How long do you mean to stay in town, Adolphus?”

“I don’t know. As long as I am permitted, I daresay!”

“No time at all, in fact.” He began to ladle the punch into three glasses. “Did you tell me you had Belper toad-eating you? What the devil made you advise him you were in London?”

“Don’t be so bacon-brained, Gideon!” Gilly implored. “Of course I never did so! That was left for my uncle to do. And he did it. I found Belper awaiting me on my doorstep.”

“If you had as much sense as a pullet you would have kicked him off your doorstep!” commented the Captain.

“‘I would I had thy inches!’” retorted the Duke ruefully.

“Resolution is all you stand in need of, my child.”

“I know. But I fancy he’s none too well-breeched, and when a man is so damned pleased to see one—well, what can one do?”

“What, indeed?” said Gideon sardonically. “I suppose if all the scaff and raff of London were to show pleasure at the sight of you you would throw your doors open to them!”

“I daresay I should,” said Gilly, with a short sigh. “How like my uncle you will be one day, when those beautiful whiskers of yours are no longer so black or so glossy! How right he was to warn me against seeking your company! And how little he knew how right he was!”

“ What? ” ejaculated Gideon. “He never did so!”

“Well, no!” admitted Gilly. “But he did warn me against letting myself be drawn into the sort of company you keep. Very justly, I daresay. You Lifeguards—Hyde Park soldiers, Belper calls you: did you know?—you’re such a fast set of fellows, and one never knows where military society may lead one, does one? He warned me against Gaywood, too. He said he might lead me into gaming-hells, and this is precisely where he did try to lead me, only I was mindful of my orders, and I didn’t go with him.”

“Humdudgeon, Adolphus! You didn’t go with him because gaming don’t amuse you. No playing off your tricks to me, little cousin!”

The Duke ladled more punch into his glass. “Don’t interrupt the head of the family, Gideon! Remember what is due to my position!”

“A little more, and that will be head downwards in my wine-cooler!” said Gideon.

“I warn you, it will be two to one against you, for Matt—if not too castaway—will stand my friend.”

Matthew, who had been sitting in a brown study, started. “I’m not castaway!” he said. “A fellow can’t be talking all the time!”

“You cannot know Belper, or you would not say so, Gideon. I shall be of full age next year, and my uncle says I must learn to manage for myself. I have a thousand amiable qualities, but I lack resolution. So I thought I would interest myself a little in my estates, but my notions were so nonsensical they made Scriven smile, and put my uncle out of all patience with me. I wish—oh, how much I wish!—that my guardian had been a villain, and my agent a fool, and that the pair of them had tried to ruin me!”

“I don’t see any sense in that!” objected Matthew, blinking.

“And I wish,” continued Gilly, disregarding the interruption, “that no one about me wished me well, or cared for my interests, or had a particle of affection for me! But they have! God knows why, but they have! Do you know what Borrowdale, and Chigwell, and Nettlebed, and my footman—no, not my footman! Heaven reward him, for he did not know me in my cradle, and does not care a fig what may become of me! He is a splendid fellow! I wonder what wage I pay him? It must be doubled!—But the rest of them—oh, yes, and Turvey, too! how came I to forget him?—the rest of them are waiting for me to come home, and fretting themselves to flinders because I would not have my carriage ordered, and so may have been set-upon by footpads, or taken a chill! They will all be sitting up for me, you know. Borrowdale will offer me a hot posset, I daresay, and I am quite sure that Nettlebed will give me a scold!” He jumped up, and began to stride restlessly about the room. “Gideon, I have been wondering what it would be like to be plain Mr. Dash, of Nowhere in Particular!”

“Try it!” recommended his cousin.

“How can I? We are not living between the covers of a romance, but in this dead bore of a Polite World! And I am going to be married! Give me some more punch! Or had you better perhaps warn me that my digestion was never of the strongest, and it may very likely set up some disorder, for which it will be necessary to summon Dr. Baillie?”

“Go to the devil!” said Gideon, refilling his glass. “You may be as ill as you please, as long as you are not ill in my chambers. I shall bundle you into a chair, and tell ’em to carry you home.”

“I like you so much,” sighed the Duke, “and there is no virtue in you! You lie, Gideon, you lie! You would have half the Faculty here within an hour of my collapse!”

“Not I!”

“I wish you will stop twaddling for ever!” suddenly exclaimed Matthew, sitting up with a jerk. “I can tell you this, Gilly! It would do you a deal of good not to be a Duke, and not to have all the money you need, and scores of servants to wait on you, and not to have a stable full of blood-cattle, or a pair of sixty-guinea Mantons, or people to manage your affairs, or—or any of the things you have got, and don’t so much as think about!”

“Yes, I think it would,” agreed Gilly, arrested by this outburst. “Would you like to change places with me?”

“By God I would!”

“Well, you can’t,” said Gilly, sitting down again. “I’ve suddenly bethought me that if we changed places I should have Uncle Henry for my father, and although I don’t wish to offend you, Matt, I don’t want him.”

“Adolphus, you are three parts disguised!” said Gideon severely.

The Duke smiled at him, but shook his head. “No, I am quite sober. But Matt is right! I have twaddled enough! Matt escort me home through our perilous streets! Where are you putting up?”

“Reddish’s, but I don’t mind going along with you,” replied Matthew, draining his glass.

The Duke went out into the hall to pick up his coat. Gideon accompanied him, and helped him to put it on. “Come and dine with me tomorrow, Adolphus,” he said, I’ll have none of our cousins here to meet you.”

“Yes, I wanted to find you alone,” said Gilly.

“You shall, my little one. Eight o’clock. Do not cut your throat before then!”

“Gideon, Gideon, you don’t suppose that I shave myself, do you?” riposted Gilly, much shocked.

Chapter VI

For some few minutes after he and Gilly had left Albany, Matthew kept up a flow of alarmingly light-hearted conversation. It did not deceive his cousin, and at the first opportunity he broke in on the chatter, and said: “Are you troubled about anything, Matt?”

The flow ceased abruptly. After a moment, Matthew said: “Troubled? Why should I be?”

“Well, I don’t know, but if you are I think you might tell me.”

“Oh! Now you are back at that Head-of-the-House stuff!” replied Matthew, with an unconvincing laugh.

“I hadn’t thought of that, but now you put me in mind of it I might as well justify my position. Are you under a cloud, Matt?”

“Oh, lord, yes, but that ain’t it! At least, in a way it is, but not as you think. My snyder is one of the faithful, thank God!”

Correctly interpreting this mystic phrase to mean that Mr. Ware’s tailor gave him long credit, the Duke said, “What’s the figure?”

There was a long silence. Mr. Ware broke it. “If you want to know, I need five thousand pounds!”

“Oh!” said the Duke. “I haven’t such a sum on me at the moment, but I daresay I could find it.”

Matthew began to laugh. “Gilly, you fool! As though my uncle would let you!”

“He has never kept me short of money. In any event, since I was twenty-one I have been at liberty to draw what I please. It is only my principal I may not tamper with.”

“Well, if he would let you I would not! I am not such a sponge! I was only bamming!”

“Matt, what is it?”

Another long silence followed this question, but the sympathy in his cousin’s voice won Matthew’s confidence. “Gilly, I am run off my legs—all to pieces!” he said, sounding very much more like a scared schoolboy than a young gentleman about to enter on his third year at the University.

The Duke tucked a hand in his arm. “We’ll raise the wind, Matt, never fear! But what is it? You are not scorched to that figure!”

“Oh, no, it’s not debt! But I don’t know what to do! It’s breach of promise!”

The Duke was somewhat staggered by this revelation.

“Breach of promise! Matt, I don’t know what you have been doing, but who the devil could be suing you for such a sum as that?”

“Not me! Suing you! Through my father, I daresay. To keep our name out of court! Everyone knows how rich you are!”

“What a fool I am!” said Gilly slowly. “Of course! But did you make an offer of marriage to this female?”

“Well, yes, I suppose I did,” said Matthew wretchedly. “You know how it is when one writes a letter!”

“Did you write her letters?”

“Yes, I did, but I never thought—And she did not answer one of them!” said Matthew, on a note of ill-usage.

“Matt, has she many of your letters?”

“It isn’t she: it’s a fellow who says he is her guardian. He says he has half a dozen of my letters. I do not know how I came to write so many, for in general, you know, I am not much of a dab in that line! But she was so excessively beautiful—! You can have no notion, Gilly!”

“Where did you meet her? Not in London?”

“Oh, no! In the High! She was looking in at a shop-window, and there was a lady with her—well, I thought she was a lady, but when I came to know her better of course I saw that she was not quite the thing, but that didn’t signify, and she said she was her aunt, and her name was Mrs. Dovercourt, but I daresay it was not. Anyway, Belinda dropped her reticule, and of course I picked it up, and—and that is how it all began!”

The Duke, feeling a trifle bewildered by this not very clear account of his cousin’s entanglement, suggested that they should thrash the matter out in the privacy of his library at Sale House. Matthew agreed to this, but said with a heavy sigh that he did not see what could be done about it. “I won’t let you pay, Gilly, and that’s an end to it! It’s all very well to say you may draw what money you please, but what a flutter there would be if you drew such a sum as that! It would be bound to come to my uncle’s ears, and he would tell my father, and then I should have nothing to do but to jump into the river, and that would not answer, because I am a pretty strong swimmer, and I daresay I shouldn’t drown at all! Of course, if I were like you, and could afford to keep my own phaeton, or curricle, or some such thing, I could drive to the devil, and break my neck, but I should like to see anyone driving a job-horse and gig to the devil! Why, you couldn’t do it! Job-horses are all slugs! I suppose I could blow my brains out, but it would mean purchasing a good pistol, and I’m not too well-blunted at this present, and to tell you the truth, Gilly, I don’t above half fancy the idea.”

The Duke, realizing that Captain Ware’s punch had something to do with this despairing utterance, replied in soothing terms, agreeing that among his own many advantages must be ranked the means of putting a period to his life in an expensive way, and drew his young relative on towards Curzon Street. The walk did much to clear Mr. Ware’s clouded intellect, but nothing to lift his depression. When he entered Sale House in Gilly’s wake, he made ah effort to appear sprightly and at his ease, but achieved such ah alarming result that had the Duke’s upper servants had eyes to spare for anyone but their master they must have noticed it, and have wondered what could be in the wind. But in the event Borrowdale, Chigwell, and Nettlebed were far too much taken-up with conveying to his Grace by innuendo a sense of anxiety he had caused them to labour under all the evening to have any attention to spare for Mr. Matthew.

The Duke bore all the solicitude that met him with his usual patience, disclaiming any feeling of chill or of fatigue, and desired Borrowdale to bring wine and biscuits into the library. “And you need none of you wait up for me!” he added. “Leave a candle on the table, and I shall do very well.”

The steward bowed, and said that it should be as his Grace wished, but Borrowdale and Nettlebed were instantly drawn into a temporary alliance, and exchanged speaking glances, expressive of their mutual determination to sit up all night, if need be.

The Duke led Matthew into the library, and installed him in a chair by the fire; one of the footmen came in with a taper, with the zealous intention of lighting all the candles in the wall-sconces and chandeliers with which the room was generously provided; and Borrowdale soon followed him with a silver tray of refreshments. Having restrained the footman, and assured Borrowdale that he should want nothing more that night, the Duke got rid of them both, and took a seat opposite his cousin’s. “Well, now, Matt, tell me the whole!” he invited.

“You won’t blab to my father if I do, will you?” said Matthew suspiciously.

“What a fellow you must think me! Of course I will not!”

His mind relieved on this score, Matthew embarked on a long and somewhat obscure story. It came haltingly at first, and with a good many rambling excuses, but when he found that his cousin had apparently no intention either of exclaiming at his folly, or of blaming him for it, he abandoned” his slightly pugnacious and extremely self-exculpatory manner, and became very much more natural, unburdening his troubled soul to the Duke, and feeling considerably the better for it.

The tale was not always easy to follow, and in spite of its length, and wealth of detail, there were several gaps in it, but the salient points were not difficult to grasp. The Duke gathered that his impulsive cousin had fallen in love at sight with a female of surpassing beauty, who was visiting Oxford with a lady who might, or might not, be her aunt. This lady, so far from discouraging the advances of a strange gentleman, had most obligingly given him her direction, and had assured him that she would be happy to see him if he should chance at any time to be passing her lodging. And of course Matthew had passed her lodging, and had received a flattering welcome there; and, finding that the lovely Belinda was even lovelier than his memory had painted her, lost no time in plunging neck and crop into an affaire which seemed to have run the gamut of stolen meetings, passionate love-letters, and wild plans of a flight to Gretna Green. Yes, he admitted, he rather thought he had mentioned Gretna Green.

The Duke knit his brows a little at this. “But, Matt, I do not perfectly understand!” he said apologetically. “You say she is threatening to sue you for breach of promise, but if you were willing to marry her I do not see how this comes about! Why would she not go with you?”

“Well, I daresay she would have,” said Matthew. “She—she is a very persuadable girl, you know. But the thing is that it costs the devil of a sum to hire a chaise to go all that way, and what with having sustained some losses, and its being pretty near the end of the term, I was not at all beforehand with the world, and I didn’t know how to raise the wind. You know what my father is! He would have lacked up the devil of a dust if I had written to ask him for some more blunt, and ten to one would have asked me what I wanted it for, because he always does, just as though I were a child, and not able to take care of my affairs! And I never thought of writing to you, Gilly—not that I would have done so if I had, for it might have come to my uncle’s ears then, and that would have been worse than anything! So what with one thing and another, it came to nothing, and, to own the truth, I was afterwards very glad of it, because I don’t think Belinda would do for me at all—in fact, I know she would not!”

“Did she seem much distressed at your plan’s coming I to nothing?” asked the Duke curiously.

“Oh, no, she did not care! It is all this Liversedge, who writes that he is her guardian. Stay, I will show you his letters—he has written to me twice, you know. I did not answer the first letter, and now he has written again, threatening to bring an action against me, and—oh, Gilly, what the devil am I to do?”

He ended on a decided note of panic, and, thrusting a hand into his pocket, produced two rather crumpled letters, written by someone who signed himself, with a flourish, Swithin Liversedge .....

The Duke, perusing these, found Mr. Liversedge’s epistolary style slightly turgid, and not always quite grammatical. Some of his periods were much involved, but there could be no mistaking his object: he wanted five thousand pounds for his ward, to compensate her for the slight she had endured, for the loss of an eligible husband, and for a wounded heart. Mr. Liversedge ended his first letter by expressing in high-flown terms his belief that neither Mr. Ware nor his noble relatives would hesitate to recognize, and meet, the claims of one whose blighted hopes seemed likely to drive into a decline.

His second letter was not so polite.

The Duke laid them both down. “Matt, who is this Liversedge?” he demanded.

“I don’t know. He says he is Belinda’s guardian.”

“But what sort of a fellow is he?”

“I tell you I don’t know! I’ve never clapped eyes on him. I didn’t know Belinda had a guardian until I received that letter.”

“Was he not with her at Oxford?”

“No, and neither Belinda nor Mrs. Dovercourt ever mentioned him that I can remember. It came as the greatest surprise to me!”

“Matt, it all sounds to me excessively like a fudge! I don’t believe he is her guardian!”

“I daresay he might not be, but what’s the odds?”

“Well, I am not very sure, but I think he can’t bring an action against you. Unless, of course, it is she who brings it, and he merely writes for her.”

Matthew considered this. “I must say I should not have thought it of Belinda,” he said, “But there is no knowing, after all! I daresay she was hoaxing me all the time, and was no more innocent than a piece of Haymarket-ware.”

The Duke glanced at the letters again, and got up, and walked over to the table, to pour out two glasses of wine.

Matthew watched him, saying after a minute: “And whatever he is, you can see one thing: he means to make himself curst unpleasant, and there’s no getting away from it that he has those damned letters of mine!”

“No,” agreed Gilly. “It’s a devil of a tangle.”

“Gilly,” said his cousin, in a hollow voice, “even if it did not come to an action, it will reach my father, and my uncle too, and that would be just as bad!”

He did not address himself to deaf ears. The Duke almost shuddered, “Good God, it must not be allowed to reach them!”

Matthew dropped his chin in his hands, his elbows propped on his knees. “If only I could think of what I had best do!” he groaned.

Gilly held out one of the glasses to him, “Here, take some wine! Does Gideon know anything of this?”

Matthew accepted the wine, and drank some. “No. I did mean—that is to say, I half thought that I might, if all else failed—But you know what Gideon is!” He saw a surprised look on the Duke’s face, and added: “Oh, well, I daresay you don’t, for he likes you! But he has a damned cutting tongue! What’s more, he is for ever roasting me about something or other, and I’d as lief—However, if you think I ought to tell him—”

“No, I don’t,” said Gilly, with sudden decision. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with Gideon!” His eyes began to dance. “I must learn to manage for myself: my uncle said so!”

“Oh, Gilly, don’t start funning!” begged Matthew. “It ain’t your affair any more than it is Gideon’s!”

“But it is my affair! You said as much yourself!” Gilly pointed out. “Liversedge knows well you could not afford to pay him half of such a sum, or my Uncle Henry either! You may depend upon it he has acquainted himself very perfectly with the circumstances. It’s my belief the whole thing was a deep-laid plot, down to the girl’s dropping her reticule when you were passing! I am the pigeon he means to pluck! Very well, then! I’ll attend to the matter myself, and I think I must be a great fool if I allow myself to be plucked by a person who cannot write the King’s English!”

“But, good God, Gilly, what are you meaning to do?” demanded Matthew.

“I am not very sure yet,” confessed the Duke, “but don’t worry. Matt! Whatever happens I won’t let it come to your father’s ears, or my Uncle Lionel’s either! Where does this fellow write from?” He picked up one of the letters as he spoke. “The Bird in Hand—yes, but I am not a bird in hand, Mr. Liversedge! Address to the receiving-office at Baldock. I suppose he fetches his letters. But why Baldock? I should have thought he would have lurked in London! Perhaps he has his reasons for not coming within reach of Bow Street. Very likely that is so, for if ever I smelled a Greek—!”

“Did you?” asked Matthew sceptically.

“Oh, lord, yes, very adroit ones too! A young man with my fortune draws ’em like a magnet. They clustered round me when I was upon my travels—until they had taken Belper’s measure! Poor Belper! he had his uses!”

Matthew sat up. “Gilly, do you think perhaps Belper would—?”

“No, certainly not! We shall keep this strictly within the family. Besides, it is the only time I have ever had the chance of doing anything for myself!”

“I do wish you will tell me what you have in your head!” Matthew said.

“I am going to pay a call on Mr. Swithin Liversedge—if I can find him!”

“Gilly, for God’s sake—!” exclaimed Matthew, now seriously disturbed.

“I must know what sort of a fellow it is we have to deal with.”

“But you must he mad! If yougo to see him, he will know you mean to buy him off, and he will very likely double his price!”

“But he won’t know I’m Sale!” replied the Duke, his face alive with mischief. “I shall be the Honourable Matthew Ware! You said you had never clapped eyes on him, so he won’t know it’s a hoax!”

“Gilly, you are mad! Even if he don’t know, what I look like, he must know I don’t drive about the country in a chaise with crests on the panels, and half a dozen servants, and—Oh, I wish you will be serious!”

“I am serious. Of course, I don’t mean to travel like that! I shall go by the mail, or the stage, or some such thing. It’s famous! I have never driven in anything but my own carriage in all my life!”

“Well, you need not think there is anything so vastly agreeable in going by stage-coach!” said Matthew, with some asperity. “If you had done it as many times as I have—”

“But I have not, and I should like to find out for myself what it is like to rub shoulders with the world!”

“Nettlebed would send off an express to my uncle on the instant!”

“I make no doubt he would, and so he may, but he won’t know where I have gone to, so much good may it do him!”

“You would not go without your valet!”

“Without anyone! Plain Mr. Dash, of Nowhere in Particular! Gideon told me to try it, and, by God, I will!”

“No, Gilly, you must not! I wish I had not said a word to you about it!”

The Duke laughed at him. “Matt, you fool! I am not going into a lion’s den! Besides, it will only be for a day or two. I don’t mean to be lost for ever, you know!”

“No, but—What if Liversedge recognizes you? He might well!”

The Duke frowned, over this for a moment or two. “But I don’t think he will,” he said at last. “If he was prowling round Oxford when I was up, he may have seen me, but I have altered considerably since then, you know. And I only came back to England last year, and have been at Sale for the better part of my life since then.”

“You were in London in the spring!”

“To be sure I was, but not in any company that Liversedge keeps, I’ll swear! If you saw me once in the street, would you know me again, beyond question? Now, if I were a big, handsome fellow like Gideon—! But I am not, Matt! You must own I am not! Has not your father said times out of mind that it is a sad pity I am such an insignificant figure of a man?”

“Yes, but—I mean, no!” Matthew corrected himself hastily. “And in any event—”

“In any event, I mean to go! When do you go up to Oxford?”

“I did mean to go tomorrow, but term hasn’t begun, and now that you have taken this crazy notion into your head I think I had best stay in town. Gilly, Uncle Lionel would tear me limb from limb if he knew of this!”

“Well, he shan’t know, and you had best go to Oxford, so that nobody may suspect you of having anything to do with my having slipped my leash!” recommended the Duke. “I’ll write to you there, to let you know how I’ve fared. But don’t get in a pucker, either on my behalf or your own! If I have to buy Liversedge off, I’ll do it, and as for the rest—what in the name of all that is wonderful do you imagine can befall me?”

“I don’t know,” said Matthew uneasily, “but I have the horridest feeling something will befall you!”

Chapter VII

The Duke awoke on the following morning with a pleasurable feeling that something agreeable lay before him. When he remembered what it was, he was obliged to own to himself that to negotiate with Mr. Swithin Liversedge might not prove to be an altogether delightful experience; but the prospect of escaping from his household, for as much perhaps as three or four days, was attractive enough to make him feel that any possible unpleasantness with Mr. Liversedge would be more than compensated for. He felt adventurous, and while he waited for Nettlebed to bring the hot chocolate with which inmates of any house under Lord Lionel’s direction still regaled themselves before getting out of bed in the morning, he lay revolving in his head various plans for his escape.

It was plainly impossible to divulge to Nettlebed the least particle of his intentions; for Nettlebed would certainly insist on accompanying him on any journey which he might undertake. And if he refused to allow Nettlebed to go with him, Nettlebed would assuredly inform his uncle of his revolutionary behaviour without a moment’s loss of time. How Nettlebed was to be prevented from telling Lord Lionel of his nephew’s disappearance, he had no very clear idea, but he trusted that one would present itself to his mind during the course of the day. And if none did, and Lord Lionel did discover his truancy—well, he would be back at Sale House again before his lordship could do anything unwelcome, and although he might have to endure one of his tremendous scolds, he would at least have enjoyed a brief spell of freedom.

Money presented no difficulties. He had scarcely broken into the hundred pounds Scriven had drawn for him on his bank, so that he would not be forced to arouse suspicion by demanding more. The hardest problem, he soon realized, would be the packing of a valise to take with him.

He had not the smallest notion where his valises and trunks were stored. This was a severe set-back, and he wasted some minutes in trying to think out a way of discovering this vital information before it occurred to him that he could very well afford to buy a new valise. Probably his own bore his cypher upon them: he could not remember, but it seemed likely, since those who ordered such things for him had what amounted to a mania for embossing them either with his crest, or with a large and flourishing letter S.

He would need shirts, too, and his night-gear, and ties, wrist-bands, brushes, combs, razors, and no doubt a hundred other things which it was his valet’s business to assemble for him. He had a dressing-case, and a toilet-battery, but he could not take either of these. Nor could he take the brushes that lay on his dressing-table, for they naturally bore his cypher. And if he abstracted a few ties and shirts from the pile of linen in his wardrobe, would Nettlebed instantly discover their absence, and run him to earth before he had had time to board the coach? He decided that he must take that risk, for although he knew he could purchase soap, and brushes, and valises, he had no idea that it might be possible to purchase a shirt. One’s shirts were made for one, just as one’s coats and breeches were, and one’s boots. But to convey out of Sale House, unobserved, a bundle of clothing, was a task that presented insuperable obstacles to the Duke’s mind. He was still trying to hit upon a way out of the difficulty when Nettlebed came in, and softly drew back the bed-curtains.

The Duke sat up, and pulled off his night-cap. He looked absurdly small and boyish in the huge bed, so that it was perhaps not so very surprising that Nettlebed should have greeted him with a few words of reproof for the late hours he had kept on the previous evening.

“I never thought to see your Grace awake, not for another two hours I did not!” he said, shaking his head. “The idea of Mr. Matthew’s sitting with you for ever, and keeping you from your bed until past three o’clock!”

The Duke took the cup of chocolate from him, and began to sip it. “Don’t be so foolish, Nettlebed!” he said. “You know very well that during the season I was seldom in bed before then, and sometimes much later!”

“But this is not the season, my lord!” said Nettlebed unanswerably. “And what is more you was often very fagged, which his lordship observed to me when we left town, and it was his wish you should recruit your strength, and keep early hours, and well I know that if he had been here Mr. Matthew would have been sent off with a flea in his ear! For bear with Mr. Matthew’s tiresome ways his lordship never has, and never will! And I think it my duty to tell you, my lord, that the piece of very gratifying intelligence your Grace was so obliging as to inform me of last night, in what one might call a confidential way, is known to the whole house, including the kitchenmaids, who have not above six pounds a year, and do not associate with the upper servants!”

“No, is it indeed?” said the Duke, not much impressed, but realizing from long experience that Nettlebed’s sensitive feelings had received a severe wound. “I wonder how it can have got about? I suppose Scriven must have dropped a hint to someone.”

“Mr. Scriven,” said Nettlebed coldly, “would not so demean himself, your Grace, being as I am myself, in your Grace’s confidence. But what, your Grace, am be expected, when—”

“Nettlebed,” said the Duke plaintively, “when you call me your Grace with every breath you draw I know I have offended you, but indeed I had no notion of doing so, and I wish you will forgive me, and let me have no more Graces!”

His henchman paid not the least heed to this request, but continued as though there had been no interruption. “But what, your Grace, can be expected, when your Grace scribbles eight advertisements of your Grace’s approaching nuptials, and leaves them all on the floor to be gathered up by an under-servant who should know his place better than to be prying into your Grace’s business?”

“Well, it doesn’t signify,” said the Duke. “The news will be in tomorrow’s Gazette, I daresay, so there is no harm done.”

Nettlebed cast him a look of deep reproach, and began to lay out his raiment.

“And I told you of it myself,” added the Duke placatingly.

“I should have thought it a very singular circumstance, your Grace, had I learnt it from any other lips than your Grace’s,” replied Nettlebed crushingly.

The Duke was just about to apply himself to the task of smoothing his ruffled sensibilities when he suddenly perceived how Nettlebed’s displeasure might be turned to good account. While Nettlebed continued in a state of umbrage, he would hold himself aloof, and without neglecting any part of his duties would certainly not hover solicitously about him. He would become, in fact, a correct and apparently disinterested servant, answering the summons of a bell with promptitude, but waiting for that summons. In general, the Duke took care not to permit such a state of affairs to endure for long, since Nettlebed could, in a very subtle way, make him most uncomfortable. Besides, he did not like to be upon bad terms with his dependants. Lying back against his pillows, he considered the valet under his lashes, knowing very well that Nettlebed was ready to accept an amend. Nettlebed had just laid his blue town coat tenderly over a chair, and was now giving a final dusting to a pair of refulgent Hessian boots. The Duke let him finish this, and even waited until he had selected a suitable waistcoat to match this attire before—apparently—becoming aware of his activities. He yawned, set down his cup, and said: “I shall wear riding-dress today.”

At any other time, such wayward behaviour in one whom he had attended since his twelfth year would have called from Nettlebed a rebuke. He would, moreover, have entered into his master’s plans for the day, and have sent down a message to the stables for him. But today he merely folded his lips tightly, and without uttering a word restored the town raiment to the wardrobe.

This awful and unaccustomed silence was maintained throughout the Duke’s toilet. It was only broken when the Duke rejected the corbeau-coloured coat being held up for him to put on. “No, not that one,” said the Duke indifferently. “The olive coat Scott made for me.”

Nettlebed perceived that this was deliberate provocation, and swelled with indignation. Scott, who made Captain Ware’s uniforms, and was largely patronized by the military, was an extremely fashionable tailor, but the Duke’s father had never had a coat from him, and Nettlebed had disliked the olive coat on sight. But he only permitted himself one glance of censure at his master before bowing stiffly, and turning away.

“I shall be out all day, and don’t know when I may return,” said the Duke carelessly. “I shan’t need you, so you may have the day to yourself.”

Nettlebed bowed again, more stiffly than ever, and assisted him to shrug himself into the offending coat. The Duke pulled down his wrist-bands, straightened his cravat, and went down to the breakfast-parlour, feeling very like his own grandfather, who was widely reported to have been a harsh and exacting master, who bullied all his servants, and thought nothing of throwing missiles at any valet who happened to annoy him.

But his cruelty attained its object. When he ventured to go upstairs again to his bedchamber there was no sign of Nettlebed. The Duke trod over to his wardrobe, and opened it. He seemed to have so many piles of shirts stacked on one of the shelves that he thought it unlikely that Nettlebed would notice any depredations, provided he took a few from each pile. He took six, to be on the safe side, and began to hunt for his nightshirts and caps. By the time he had made a selection amongst these, and had added a number of ties, and other necessaries, to the heap on the bed, this had assumed formidable proportions, and he surveyed it rather doubtfully. By dint of asking an incurious under-footman for it, he had been able to procure some wrapping-paper and a ball of twine without incurring question, but he began to think that it was not going to be an easy task to tie up all these articles of apparel into a neat bundle. He was quite right. By the time he had achieved anything approaching a tolerable result he was slightly heated, and a good deal exasperated. And when he looked dispassionately at his bundle he realized that it would be quite impossible for him to walk out of his house carrying such a monstrous package. Then he bethought him that if he did not leave his house quickly he would very likely fall into the clutches of Captain Belper, and fright sharpened his wits. He sent for his personal footman, that splendid fellow who did not care a fig for what might become of him. When the man presented himself, he waved a careless hand towards the bundle, and said: “Francis, you will oblige me, please, by carrying that package round to Captain Ware’s chambers, and giving it into his man’s charge. Inform Wragby that it contains—that it contains some things I promised to send Captain Ware! Perhaps I had best send the Captain a note with it!”

“Very good, your Grace,” said Francis, with a gratifying lack either of surprise or of interest.

The Duke pulled out his tablets from his pocket, found a pencil, and scrawled a brief message. “ Gideon, ” he wrote, “ ‘pray keep this bundle for me till I come to you this evening. Sale.”He tore off the leaf from his tablets, twisted it into a screw, and gave it to Francis. “And, Francis!” he said, rather shyly.

“Your Grace?”

“Do you think,” said the Duke, with a faint, rueful smile, “you can contrive to leave the house without Nettlebed’s seeing you, or Borrowdale, or—or anyone?”

“Certainly, your Grace,” said Francis woodenly.

“Thank you!” said the Duke, with real gratitude.

He would have been surprised had he been privileged to read the thoughts in his footman’s head. This impassive individual had not been a year in the employment of the gentlest-mannered master he had ever served without developing a lively sympathy for him. It was his opinion, freely expressed to his intimates over a heavy-wet, that there was never a lad so put-upon as the little Duke, and that it fair made a man’s blood boil to hear old Gundiguts and Muffin-face a-worriting him, not to mention my Lord Stiff-Rump, treating the lad to enough cross-and-jostle work to drive him into Bedlam. So far from not caring a fig for what became of the Duke, he was extremely curious to know what mischief he was up to, for mischief he would go bail it was. It would be a rare treat to slumguzzle Gundiguts and Muffin-face, and he was only sorry that his training forbade him to offer his master any further, assistance he might need in hoodwinking them and all the rest of the household, rump and stump.

The Duke drew his watch out, and glanced at it apprehensively. The menace of Captain Belper loomed large. He dived into his hanging-wardrobe, found a long, drab-coloured driving-coat with several shoulder-capes, a high collar, and large mother-of-pearl buttons; and a high-crowned beaver hat. He thought that he might perhaps be glad of a muffler, so he searched for that too. He could not think of anything else that he might need, so having assured himself that the visiting-card he had wrested from his unwilling cousin Matthew was safely tucked into hispocket-book, he left his room, and walked sedately down the great staircase.

The porter, who was sitting in a large leather chair by the front door, got up as soon as he saw him and told him that a package had just been delivered at the house from Joseph Manton’s. This instantly put the Duke in mind of the absolute necessity of taking a good pair of pistols with him upon his hazardous adventure. In spite of the danger of being caught by Captain Belper, he was quite unable to resist the temptation of carrying Manton’s package into the library, and unwrapping his purchase. The pistols, a really beautiful pair, lay snugly in their leather case, looking very slender and wicked. The Duke lifted one from its velvet bed, and tested its balance lovingly. No one could expect him to leave such peerless acquisitions behind! He slid the case into his capacious pocket, and the ball and powder thoughtfully provided by Mr. Manton in another pocket, telling himself that Baldock would be the very place for a little practice.

He went out into the hall again to find that Borrowdale had sailed into it from his quarters at the back of the house, attended rather regally by two footmen. Borrowdale wished to know if his Grace would be dining at home, and—with a glance at his Grace’s top-boots—whether his Grace desired his horse to be brought round.

“No,” said the Duke jauntily. “No, thank you, Borrowdale. I do not desire anything at all. And if Captain Belper should call—you do not know when I shall be returning.”

“Very good, your Grace,” bowed Borrowdale. “And when does your Grace expect to return?”

The Duke smiled at him. “But if you knew that you would not be able to tell Captain Belper that you did not, would you?” he said gently.

Before Borrowdale had recovered from his surprise sufficiently to disabuse his master’s mind of its curious misapprehension, the Duke had left the house.

His first objective was the General Post Office in Lombard Street. He drove to the City in a hackney carriage, which was an adventure in itself, since he had never ridden in one before, but a disappointment awaited him at the Post Office, where he discovered that as the mails all left London overnight he must he prepared to leave town at half-past eight that evening if he wished to avail himself of their services. A burly citizen in a low-crowned hat took pity on his inexperience, and directed him to a stage coach office, at the Saracen’s Head in Aldgate High Street. He seemed amused when the Duke, thanking him, asked the way to Aldgate High Street, said that he was a regular Johnny Raw, and begged him not to let himself be smoked by any fly-coves whom he might meet.

The Saracen’s Head was a big, busy hostelry, with two tiers of galleries running round a paved courtyard. Even at eleven o’clock in the morning, with most of the outgoing coaches departed long since, it was the scene of considerable activity, and quite a number of persons were waiting in the coach-office to book places on one or other of the many coaches which had their headquarters at the Saracen’s Head. The Duke, when it came to his turn, was successful in obtaining the box-seat on the Highflyer, which was due to leave London at eight in the morning, on its long journey to Edinburgh, and would arrive at Baldock at about noon. He then engaged a room at the inn for one night, and, evading the urgent entreaties of a lady who held a bunch of watercress under his nose, and refusing the offer of a one-legged man to sell him a doormat, he set off to look for a shop where he could buy a valise.

This was soon accomplished, and having arranged for the bag to be delivered at Captain Ware’s chambers, the Duke was able to turn his attention to such minor matters as the purchasing of soap, and tooth-powder, and a razor. He was directed to Bedford House, where he was most surprised to find for what a small sum he could buy hair-brushes, and combs, and other such articles. In the end, he made so many small purchases that he was obliged once more to make use of his cousin’s chambers.

It was just before eight, having whiled away the afternoon as best he could, that he entered the precincts of Albany. As he strolled up the Rope-Walk, an acquaintance who was sallying forth in evening attire, levelled a quizzing-glass at his top-boots, and said: “Just arrived from the Country, I see, Duke! I did not know you were expected in town. Are you on your way to your cousin? You will find him at home: I saw him come in above an hour ago/’

“I am dining with him,” the Duke replied.

“Well, I shall see you at White’s tomorrow, I daresay.”

The Duke agreed to this somewhat mendaciously, and passed on.

When he was admitted into Captain Ware’s chambers, his cousin met him in the hall with a ribald demand to know whether he took his lodging for a receiving office.

The Duke smiled up at him engagingly. “Oh, I could think of nowhere else to have them sent!” he said. “You can have no notion how busy I have been!”

“But, Adolphus, has it come to this, that you are obliged to fetch your linen home from the washerwoman?” asked Gideon, pointing to the unwieldy bundle on the floor.

“So Francis contrived to smuggle it away! Good!” said the Duke, casting off his greatcoat. “Gideon, I have slipped my leash!”

“Capital!” approved his cousin. “Come and tell me the whole!”

The Duke followed him into his sitting-room, but said: “Well, no! I think I will not, if you do not mind it very much!”

“Then tell me nothing at all,” said Gideon, handing him a glass of sherry. “Not, believe me, Adolphus, that I would cast the least rub in your way!”

The Duke, with the nature of his adventure in mind, was not so sure of this. His big cousin could be depended upon to aid and abet him in kicking over his irksome traces, but let him catch but one whiff of Mr. Liversedge and his demands and he would without any doubt at all cast very much more than a rub in the way. So he smiled again, and sipped his sherry.

Gideon, who knew that sweet, abstracted smile, said accusingly: “Adolphus, you are brewing mischief!”

“Oh, no!” said Gilly. “I am just very tired of being myself, and I am going to take your advice, and try how I like being plain Mr. Dash. To be Duke of Sale is a dead bore!”

“I am aware. Did I so advise you? My father will want my head on a charger!”

“Last night. I have made a start already, for I have been doing all manner of things that I never did before. A man I met in the City took me for a Johnny Raw. And I think he was right: I am shockingly green! But I shall soon learn. I am going out of town, you know.”

“So I had supposed. Does that infamous bundle contain your raiment?”

“Yes, and such a work as I had to get it away without Nettlebed’s seeing it! Gideon, I think perhaps Nettlebed may seek me here. Do, pray, assure him that I am safe, and keep them all from flying into some absurd pucker!”

“You may rely on me, Adolphus,—if not to do quite what you would wish—at least to afford your retinue no clue whatsoever to your whereabouts. In fact, I shall deny all knowledge of you.”

“Poor Nettlebed!” said Gilly. “I fear he will be in despair. I offended him this morning, and left him quite out of charity with me. I suppose it is a great deal too bad of me to put him in a fright, but I can’t bear it any longer, Gideon! They treat me as though I were a child, or an imbecile! I cannot move a step without one or other of them running to call my carriage, or hand me my gloves, or ask me when I mean to return! Yes, yes, I know what you will say! But I cannot do it! I have made the attempt, but the devil of it is I can’t but remember how Borrowdale used to give me sugar-plums when I was in disgrace, and how dear, good Chigwell told my uncle it was he who broke the window in the Red Drawing-room, and how Nettlebed has nursed me whenever I have been ill—oh, and a hundred other things of the kind!”

Gideon’s crooked smile flickered. “Very well. So, since you cannot bring yourself to tell them that you are a man, and can fend for yourself, you mean to show them that it is so. Is that it?”

“I suppose it is. That is, I didn’t think of it, but perhaps it may answer! I only thought how much I wished to be free! But I own if the chance had not offered I should still be talking fustian about being blue-devilled, and making not the least push to assert myself! I must be the dullest, most spiritless dog alive!”

“Oh, without doubt!” agreed Gideon. “But has this humdrum age suddenly offered you adventure, Adolphus? I had not believed it to be possible!”

“A very small adventure!” the Duke said, laughing. “I have found something to do for myself, and perhaps I can do it, and perhaps I cannot, but at all events I mean to try. And for once in my life I am going to see how it would be not to be a Duke, with servants puffing off my consequence wherever I go, and toad-eaters agreeing with every ill-considered word I utter, and inn-keepers bowing till their noses touch their knees, and the common world saying nothing but Yes, your Grace! and No, your Grace! and As your Grace pleases! Do you think I shall make a sad botch of it?”

“No, my little one, I think you have a very good understanding, and will manage tolerably well for yourself, but whether you will enjoy the experience of having none to wait on you is another matter,” grinned Gideon. “It won’t harm you, however: you have been kept well-wrapped in lamb’s-wool for too long. I hope you will have very exciting adventures, and slay a great many giants and dragons. I wish I might see you!”

“Oh, no, that would never do!” Gilly said, shaking his head. “You would think me very slow in killing my dragon, and soon fall out of patience with me, and end by pushing me out of the way, and slaying the beast yourself!” He added with a gleam of humour: “And I have a melancholy suspicion that if I had you within call I shouldn’t take the trouble, to think of anything for myself. Oh, I am sure I should wait for you to tell me what I must do next, for that is always what I used to do, and habits, you know, are damnably hard to break! And you are a very peremptory, autocratic, and overbearing fellow, Gideon!”

“Alas! Shall you give me a sharp set-down when you come back from your adventure?”

“Very likely,” said Gilly, putting his empty glass down.

Wragby came into the room to set the dishes on the table. His master told him that he need not wait, and the Duke said, as he took his seat: “How snug this is! Shall I carve this bird? I can, you know! My uncle says a man should know how to carve anything that is set before him. I can shoe a horse, too. Now, why do you suppose he should have thought I must learn such a thing as that? He is the strangest creature! How angry he will be with me when he hears what I have been about! It makes me shake like a blancmanger only to think of it.”

“Amongst the many odd fancies that come into my head, Adolphus,” said his cousin dryly, “is the fancy—I have often been conscious of it!—that in spite of your meekness you do not shake like a blancmanger before my father!”

“No, of course I don’t: he is a great deal too kind to me. But I do not like it when he storms at me, and arguing gives me the headache. I always try to slip away, and being so small and unremarkable I can in general manage to do so,” said the Duke serenely.

Gideon smiled. “Your elusive ways are well known to me. And, by God, it is just what you are doing, now I come to think of it! Don’t try to gammon me with your hints of adventures to be embarked on! You are merely slipping away to rather more purpose than usual. What lying story have you fobbed your devoted servants off with?”

The Duke looked up with rather a guilty twinkle in his eyes. “Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t,” he confessed. “You cannot slip away unobserved if you tell people you mean to go!”

“Gilly, for God’s sake—! Have you left them without a word?” exclaimed Gideon.

The Duke nodded. For a moment Gideon sat staring at him with knit brows. Then he burst out laughing. “It’s the maddest quirk I ever heard tell of, and who— who would have guessed that you had it in you to do it?” he said. “Adolphus, I no longer despair of you! You will undoubtedly set your whole household by the ears, from my father down to your lowliest footman, and it will do them a great deal of good! Don’t come back too soon! Let them learn their lesson past fear of forgetting it: you may then enjoy some peace hereafter. Fill up your glass! We’ll have a toast to your emancipation. No daylights, no heel-taps!”

Then Duke obeyed, and pushed the bottle across the table. “No, we shall drink to the adventures of Mr. Dash!” he said.

“Anything you please!” grinned his cousin, and tossed off his wine with a flourish.

The Duke followed suit. As he lowered his glass, the ring on his finger caught his eye. He drew it off. “Keep that for me!” he said, handing it to Gideon. “It quite ruins my disguise!”

Chapter VIII

The Duke did not enjoy a very restful night’s repose in his room at the Saracen’s Head. The feather-bed upon which he twisted and turned seemed to be composed largely of lumps; and no one else in the inn appeared to go to bed at all. The noise in the tap-room went on until far into the night; doors banged; footsteps clumped down the passages; and an occasional clatter suggested that kitchenmaids enjoyed no respite from their labours. He was also very much too hot, the bed being piled high with blankets, and having been warmed for him by a chambermaid who was directed to take up a warming-pan for the Quality in No. 27 as soon as he arrived in his hackney from Albany.

He had remained with his cousin until an advanced hour, and was consequently tired when he reached the inn. If he, had owned the truth to himself, which he resolutely refused to do, he would not have been ill-pleased to have found Nettlebed awaiting him, ready to have unpacked his valise, pulled off his boots, and poured out hot water for him to wash his face and hands in. His bedchamber, which was small, and rather stuffy, seemed oddly friendless when he entered it, and was lit by only one candle, which was set down on the dressing-table by the boots who escorted him upstairs. Had Nettlebed been with him, he would have found his familiar belongings already laid out for him, his own sheets upon the bed, and—but had Nettlebed been with him he would not, of course, have been staying at an inn of this class, but at some posting-house which despised stage-coach travellers, and catered only for the Nobility and Gentry. The Duke firmly banished Nettlebed from his mind, and put himself to bed.

It naturally did not occur to him that he must ask to be called in the morning, but fortunately the boots took his measure, and suggested to him that he should state the hour at which he would wish to have a jug of shaving-water brought up to him. In the event, he underestimated the time it would take him to shave, dress himself, and pack his valise, and it was consequently in a somewhat flurried and breathless state that he ran down to the coffee-room to partake of a hasty breakfast. As he had forgotten to set his top-boots outside his door, these had not been cleaned, and looked, to his fastidious eye, very dull and dusty. But when he came out of the coffee-room into the yard, he found that amongst the many irrelevant persons assembled there was a shoe-black, of whose services he instantly availed himself.

While this individual laboured upon his boots, he had leisure to observe the activities going on around him, and was so much entertained that any regrets he might have had that he had embarked on such an impulsive adventure left him.

The Highflyer, upon which he was to travel, had been dragged into the yard, and was being loaded with all manner of baggage. All the heavy cases were hoisted on to the roof, and the Duke’s eyes widened as corded trunk after corded trunk was piled up, until it seemed as though the coach could scarcely escape an overturn at the first bend in the road, so top-heavy had it become. While this was going forward, several persons were assisting the guard to stow into the boot all manner of smaller packages, including the Duke’s valise. When this was full, all the articles which still littered the yard, such as a basket of fish, several bandboxes, and some parcels done up in paper, were lashed to the hind axle-tree, or to the lamp-irons.

Meanwhile, the coachman, a burly gentleman in a multiplicity of coats, and with an enormous nosegay in his buttonhole, stood at one of the doors leading into the inn enjoying a flirtation with a housemaid. He paid no heed to the equipage he was about to drive until the ostlers led out from the stables a team of chestnuts, when he ran his eye critically over them, and delivered himself of various scraps of advice and instruction, which included an alarming command to take care not to let the near-wheeler touch the roller-bolt. The passengers were most of them engaged in arguments with the guard, and in fretfully waving away half the street-criers of London, who, for reasons which the Duke was unable to fathom, had assembled in the yard for the purpose of offering travellers every imaginable comfort upon their journey, from Holland socks, at only four shillings the pair, to hot spiced gingerbread. He had himself been obliged several times to refuse a rat-trap, a bag of oranges, and a paper of pins. One or two of the travellers, notably a thin man, muffled in a greatcoat, muffler, and a plaid shawl, seemed inclined to be querulous; and two elderly ladies were fast driving the guard to distraction by their repeated and shrill enquiries as to the exact location of a number of bandboxes and string-bags. Two of the gentlemen proposing to travel had not found the time to shave; and another was engaged in an acrimonious altercation with the jarvey who had driven him to the inn in a hackney.

The horses having been poled up, the coachman took a regretful leave of the housemaid, and rolled into the centre of the yard, casting an indulgent eye over his way-bill. The Duke thrust a silver coin into the shoe-black’s hand, and mounted on to his seat on the roof; the thin man besought the coachman to assure him that the near-wheeler was not an arrant kicker; the two elderly ladies were cast into a flutter of agitation; and the guard warned everyone to make haste, as they were about to be off, and the Highflyer didn’t wait for no one.

The coachman, having cast an experienced eye over his cattle, and warned an ostler in corduroy breeches and a greasy plush waistcoat not to take off the twitch from the young ’oss’s nose until he gave him the word, crammed the way-bill into his pocket, and mounted ponderously on to his very uncomfortable box-seat, and gathered up the reins. He was apparently contemptuous of the passengers, for, having taken his whip in his hand, he commanded the ostlers to let ’em go, without troubling himself to cast more than a casual glance behind. A brief recommendation to the passengers to look out for themselves was all the notice he deigned to bestow upon them; and it was left to the guard to warn them to mind their heads as the coach passed under the archway into the narrow street. The morning was damp and misty, and the Duke was rather sorry that he had not had the forethought to provide himself with a rug. But the coachman, who, after a sidelong scrutiny, had decided that he would be good for half a guinea, assured him genially that the day was going to be a rare fine one by the time they reached Islington Green.

While the coach wended its way through the London streets, the coachman was too much taken up with avoiding collision with market-carts, and occasional droves of cattle that were still coming into town, to have leisure for conversation, but when they began to draw out of the Metropolis, he responded to the incessant fire of nervous questions from the thin man, who was seated just, behind the Duke, saying with great good-humour that he had worked a coach for thirty years, and never had an upset. The thin man said severely that if he should attempt to race any other coach encountered upon the road he should report him to his proprietor; and informed the company at large that it was his usual practice to travel upon the Mail, in which excellent service armed guards were provided, and the dragsmen very strictly watched for any infringement of the rules. The coachman favoured the Duke with a wink, and began to tell a number of hair-raising stories about the terrible accidents met with by mail-coachmen, all of whom, he asserted, raced one another with an utter indifference to the safety or comfort of their passengers. And as for the guards provided by the Post Office, why, he could tell the thin man that time was when not a highwayman upon the road as was a highwayman would have faded to have had a touch at the mails.

The first advertised stage on the road was Barnet, where those passengers who had not yet breakfasted would be allowed fifteen minutes in which to eat and drink what they could; but when the turnpike at Islington was passed, and the tall elms on the green came into sight, the coachman reined in. From the number of coaches standing outside the Peacock Inn, or pulling away from it, it seemed that this halt was customary. An ostler shouted out the name of the coach as it drew up; a man came hurrying out of the inn, buttoning up his coat, and clutching a carpet-bag in one hand; and a woman with a shawl drawn over her head entered into negotiations with the guard for the delivery of two ducks at some point further along the road. The thin man said suspiciously that he dared say the man with the carpet-bag was not on the way-bill; but his neighbour, a more tolerant man, retorted that a bit of shouldering hurt nobody. This led the coachman into a bitter dissertation on the ways of informers, who, if he was to be believed, lurked at every point on the road, spying on honest coachmen, and trying to snatch the bread from their mouths. The Duke responded sympathetically, and the business with the beshawled woman being by this time concluded the coach set off again, passing the village pound, where a solitary cow lowed, and a small shop which offered in large lettering to beaver old hats.

The Holloway road was soon reached, and gave the coachman the opportunity of curdling the thin man’s blood with a series of reminiscences of all the desperate characters who had ever frequented it.

“Was it not on this stretch that Grimaldi was once robbed?” asked the Duke, who, as a small boy, had been regaled with all these stories.

“Ah, that it was!” nodded the coachman approvingly. “And only ten or so years ago! But ven they took his vatch, d’ye see, it had his phiz drawed on it, a-singing of ‘Me and my Neddy’, and they gave it to him back again, because he was werry well-liked.”

“I saw him once,” the Duke said. “At Sadler’s Wells, I think it was; I remember he made me laugh very much.”

“Veil, and so he would do, sir, seeing as that was his lay, in a manner of speaking. And how far am I to have the pleasure of carrying of you, sir?”

“Only to Baldock,” the Duke replied.

The coachman shook his head, and said that it was a pity, as there were few stretches of road this side of Biggleswade where he would care to run the risk of handing over the reins to one, who, he clearly perceived, was fair itching to tool the coach. The thin man, who overheard this, instantly raised such a storm of protest that the Duke felt obliged to set his mind at rest, and assure him that he had no desire to take the reins. The tolerant man, who seemed to have taken a dislike to his neighbour, gave his dispassionate opinion of spoilsports in general, and Friday-faced ones in particular; and aconsequential gentleman embarked on a long story about a spirited team of blood-horses which he was in the habit of driving.

When Finchely Common, with all its lurking dangers, had been safely passed, most of the passengers were feeling too sharp-set to think of much beyond the breakfast awaiting them in Barnet; and when the coach drove into the yard of the inn at Barnet, nearly everyone hurried into the coffee-room, where a couple of over-driven waiters were running about with piled trays, and mechanical cries of “Coming directly, sir!”

The Duke had consumed little more than a running banquet at the Saracen’s Head, but he did not feel inclined to join in the scramble for coffee and ham, and instead wandered a little way up the street to stretch his legs. On his previous journeys to the north, he had changed horses at the Red Lion, but this noted house did not condescend to stage-coaches, although its landlord resorted to some extremely low stratagems to snatch custom from his hated rival at the Green Man, farther up the street. It was not an unknown thing for his ostlers to rush out into the road to intercept some private carriage whose owner had no notion of changing horses, and to drag it into the yard, and forcibly to provide a fresh pair for it. The Duke had the good fortune to witness a spirited bout of fisticuffs between two of the yellow-jacketed post-boys hired by the Red Lion against three blue-habited ones from the Green Man, and watched with amused appreciation the efforts of an old gentleman in a chaise-and-pair to convince the ostlers of the Red Lion that since he was only travelling as far as to Welwyn, he stood in no need of fresh horses.

When he returned to the coach, and climbed again on to the roof, the Duke found that everyone but the coachman, who had been regaled in the yard with strong drink and flattery, was in a ruffled frame of mind. Even the tolerant man said that to be asked to pay the full price for breakfast when one had had barely time to swallow two scalding mouthfuls of coffee, and had been unable to eat the ham for want of a knife and fork, was a scandalous state of affairs which ought to be looked to.

The Duke had long since discovered that riding on the roof of the stage-coach did not agree with his constitution. It had held the amusement of novelty for a few miles, but the swaying and lurching, added as they were to a very uncomfortable seat, soon made even the coachman’s instructive conversation pall upon him. His head had begun to ache; he had never, he remembered, been a good traveller. Baldock seemed to be a very long way off; and by the time Stevenage was reached, and the coachman attempted to lure him into making a bet as to which of the famous SixHills were the longest distance apart, he refused to humour him, merely replying wearily: “The first and the last. I learned that when I was still in short-coats.”

The coachman was disappointed in him, forthis time-honoured catch was generally good for a drink at the next halt. He began to think the box-seat passenger a mean-spirited young man, but revised his opinion when, upon setting him down outside the White Horse at Baldock, he received a guinea from him. He decided then that the Duke was half-flash and half-foolish, and was sorry to be seeing the last of him.

The guard having unearthed the Duke’s valise from the recesses of the boot, his Grace was left standing with it at his feet in the road, waiting for someone to run out and carry it into the inn.

But it appeared that inns patronized by stage-coach travellers were not staffed by servants falling over themselves to wait upon guests, so the Duke was obliged to pick up the valise, and to carry it into the inn himself.

The front door opened into a passage, leading at the back of the premises into a lobby, from which the stairs rose to the upper floor. The coffee-room and the tap-room both gave on to the passage, the former of these being an old-fashioned apartment with only one table, which ran its length.

The Duke set down his valise, and as he did so a door opened at the back of the house, and a stout landlady Issued forth. She greeted the Duke civilly, but sharply, saying: “Good day, sir, and what may I do for you?”

“I should like to hire a room, if you please,” said the Duke, with his gentle dignity.

Her eyes ran over him. “Yes, sir. How long would you be staying, if I may ask?”

“I am not perfectly sure. A day or two, perhaps.” Her quick scrutiny having taken in every detail of the quiet elegance which characterized his dress, she directed her gaze to his face. She seemed to like what she saw there, and allowed her features to relax their severity. She said, still briskly, but in a tone that held a hint of motherliness: “I see, sir. A nice front bedchamber you would like, and a private parlour, I daresay. You won’t care to be sitting in that noisy coffee-room.”

The Duke thanked her, and said that he thought he should be glad of the parlour.

“Come from London on the coach, sir?” said Mrs. Appleby. “Nasty racketing things they be! Shaking all your bones together until you’re fair wore-out with holding on to the side to stop yourself falling off. I can see you’re tired, sir: you look downright bagged!”

“Oh, no!” Gilly said, blushing faintly. “I have just a touch of the headache, that is all.”

“I’ll fetch you up a pot of tea directly, sir, for there’s nothing like it, and I’ve a kettle right on the boil at this very moment. Myself, I could never abide the way those coaches sways over the road: it makes a body’s stomach rise up against them, and that’s the truth. Polly! Ned! Take up the young gentleman’s bag to No. 1, Ned; and you, my girl, get some kindling and set a fire going in the Pink Parlour! Bustle about, now! Don’t stand there gawping!”

“Thank you, but I shan’t need a fire: it is quite warm,” said Gilly.

“You’ll be more comfortable with a bit of a blaze in the grate, sir,” said Mrs. Appleby firmly. “Very treacherous these autumn days are, and you don’t look very stout to me, if you will pardon the liberty. But no need to be afraid of damp sheets in my house, and if you should happen to fancy a hot posset going to bed you have only to pull the bell, and I shall brew it for you, and with pleasure.”

The Duke perceived suddenly that he had escaped from Nettlebed only to fall into the clutches of Mrs. Appleby, and gave an involuntary laugh. Mrs. Appleby smiled kindly at him, and said: “Ah, you’re feeling better now your stomach’s beginning to settle, sir! I’ll take you up to your bedchamber. And what name would it be, if you please?”

“Rufford,” replied Gilly, choosing one of his titles at random. “Mr. Rufford.”

“Very good, sir, and mine is Appleby, if you should want to call me at any time, which I beg you will do if there is anything you would like. This way, if you’ll be so good!”

He followed her upstairs to a dimity-hung room overlooking the street. The furniture was all old-fashioned, but everything seemed to be clean, and the bed looked as if it might be comfortable. He laid his hat down, and pressed his hands over his eyes for a moment, before casting off the muffler from round his neck. Mrs. Appleby, observing this unconscious gesture, instantly recommended him to lay himself down upon the bed, and promised to fetch up a hot brick to put at his feet. The Duke, who knew from bitter experience that the only cure for his shattering headaches was to lie in a darkened room, said that he would go to bed for a little while, but declined the hot brick. But Mrs. Appleby reminded him so forcibly of his old nurse that he was not really surprised when she re-entered the room shortly afterwards carrying the promised brick wrapped in a piece of flannel. The boots shortly appeared with a tea-tray; and Polly was sent off to fetch up the vinegar, so that the poor young gentleman could bathe his face with it. With three people ministering to him, the Duke could almost have fancied himself back at Sale House, and although a spiked cartwheel seemed to be revolving behind his eyes, he could not help giving another of his soft laughs. Mrs. Appleby stood over him while he drank his tea, telling him that her son, who was in a very good way of business at Luton, had suffered from Just such sick headaches when he was a lad, but had grown out of them, as Mr. Rufford would doubtless do also. She then drew the curtains across the window, picked up the tea-tray, and departed, leaving Gilly divided between annoyance at his own weakness and amusement at her evident adoption of him.

Chapter IX

Although the Duke’s headache had not quite left him by the time a medley of fragrant odours arising from downstairs announced the dinner-hour to be at hand, it was materially better, and he got up from his bed, and unpacked his valise. By the time he had disposed his belongings in the chest of drawers, his attentive hostess was tapping on the door. He assured her that he was much restored, and she escorted him to a small parlour, where a fire burned, and the table was already spread with a cloth, and laid with some bone-handled knives and forks.

The Duke dined off some small collars, a serpent of mutton, and a boiled duck with onion sauce, and afterwards tried the experiment of lighting one of the cigars he had brought with him. The waiter, who had been about to bring him a spill, watched with deep interest the kindling of a match with Promethean fire from the machine which the Duke carried in his pocket, and ventured to say that he had heard tell of those things, but had never before seen one.

The Duke smiled in his absent way, and asked: “Is there an inn in Baldock called the Bird in Hand?”

“It’s wunnerful what they think of,” said the waiter. “They do tell me they even has gas-lamps in Lunnon nowadays. Bird in Hand, sir? Not in Baldock, there isn’t. Leastways, I never heard tell on it, and it stands to reason I would have if there were sich a place.”

“Perhaps it may be a little way from the town,” suggested Gilly.

“Ah, very likely,” the waiter agreed, beginning to pile up the dishes on a tray. “There’s no saying but what it mightn’t be so.”

“And perhaps,” further suggested Gilly patiently, “there may be someone in the tap-room who may know of it if you were to ask them.”

The waiter said that he would do this, and went away with his tray. He was gone for some time, and when he came back, although he had collected a quantity of information about a Bird in the Bush, a Partridge, and a Feathers Inn, he had not discovered anyone who knew the Bird in Hand. Gilly rewarded him suitably for his efforts, and said that it did not signify. He did not feel equal to pursuing his enquiries further that evening, so when the waiter had withdrawn he stretched his legs out before the fire, and opened the book his cousin Gideon had given him to read upon his travels. The preface somewhat quellingly advertised the work to exhibit “the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue,” but Gideon had warned him not to allow himself to be daunted by this unpromising start. The book was anonymously published, and had, of course, been cut up by the Quarterly. It was entitled Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. The Duke blew a cloud of smoke, crossed one foot over the other, and began to read.

The candles were guttering in their sockets, and the fire was burning very low when the Duke at last tore himself from the tale, and went to bed.

He saw, on consulting his watch, that it was past midnight, and when he opened the door of the parlour he found the inn in darkness. Guarding the flame of his bedroom candle with one hand, he trod along the passage, not precisely expecting to meet a man-made monster (for he was no longer a child, he told himself) but with a shudder in his flesh. He must find some indescribably horrible tale to bestow on Gideon, in revenge for his having given his poor little cousin a book calculated to keep him awake all night, he decided, smiling tohimself.

But with every expectation of having his rest disturbed by nightmares, he slept soundly and dreamlessly all night, awaking in the morning to hear cocks crowing, and to find sunlight stealing between the closed blinds of his room. All trace of his headache had left him; he felt remarkably well, and thought there must be something salubrious about the air of Hertfordshire.

He had told the boots he would have his shaving-water brought to him at eight o’clock, but when this worthy came into his room to waken him, he found him standing by the window in his great coat, interestedly watching a herd of bullocks being driven down the street. It seemed to be market-day, and the Duke had never come into close contact with a market before, and consequently found it most entertaining. He turned his head when the boots entered, saying: “Is it market-day? What quantities of pigs and cows and chickens have come into the town! You must have a very large market here!”

“Oh, no, sir!” said the boots pityingly, setting down the jug of water on the corner-washstand. “ This ain’t nothing! Missus said to ask if there was anything as you would be wanting.”

“Thank you—if you would be good enough to have my coat brushed!” the Duke said, picking it up, and handing it to him.

The boots bore it off carefully. It seemed a very grand coat to him, made of superfine cloth, and lined with silk. He told the waiter, whom he happened to meet on his way to the boot-room, that he suspicioned No. 1 was a high-up gentleman, one as had come into the world hosed and shod, for he had thrown his good shirt that hadn’t a spot on it on to the floor, and a necktie with it, like as if he meant to put on a fresh one. “Which is a thing, Fred, as none but the nobs does. And what queers me is what brings him to this house!”

“Perhaps the Runners is after him,” said the waiter. “He’s killed his man in a bloody duel, that’s very likely what he’s done, and he’s a-hiding of hisself.”

“Gammon!” said the boots scornfully. “He no more killed no one in no duel than a babe unborn!”

“Maybe there’s a fastener going to be served on him,” said the waiter doubtfully. “Though he do seem to be a well-breeched cove as isn’t likely to have got into debt.”

“No, he ain’t!” retorted the boots. “He come here on the stage, and he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t run aground. Swallowed a spider, that’s what he’s done. Missus ought to make him show his blunt, but she’s taken one of her fancies to him, and likely hell chouse her out of his reckoning.”

“He don’t look like a downy one to me,” objected the waiter. “And if he’d swallowed a spider he wouldn’t have handed me a fore-coachwheel only for asking of silly questions for him, which he did do.”

“What’s a half-crown to the likes of him?” said the boots disdainfully, but he was impressed by this proof of open-handedness in the Duke, and made up his mind to give his top-boots an extra polish before carrying them upstairs.

When he had partaken of breakfast, the Duke picked up his hat, and sallied forth to find the post-receiving office, where he enquired the direction of one Mr. Liversedge. The clerk said that he did not seem to know the name, and he rather thought he had handed a letter or two to a gentleman calling himself that, or something like it; but he declined to admit any knowledge of the Bird in Hand. No deliveries were made by the Post Office to any such hostelry, and if it existed at all, which he seemed loftily to doubt, it was possibly a common alehouse outside the town, such as would not be frequented by literate persons.

The Duke then bethought him of the market, and made his way there. It was the scene of considerable bustle and business, and in the excitement of watching a young bull, which seemed to have escaped from its tether, being rounded up; six pigs knocked down to a farmer in a red waistcoat; and a large gander putting to rout two small boys and a mongrel cur, he rather forgot the object in view. But when he had been strolling about the market-place for some time, he remembered it, and he asked a man who was meditating profoundly over some fine cabbages whether he knew where the Bird in Hand was to be found. The man withdrew his mind from the cabbages reluctantly, and after considering the Duke for a time, said simply: “You’ll be meaning the Bird and Bush.”

The Duke received very much the same answer from the next five people whom he questioned, but the sixth, a jolly-looking farmer with a striped waistcoat and leggings, said: “Why, sir, whatever would the likes of you be wanting with sich a place as that?”

“Do you know it?” asked the Duke, who had begun to think that Mr. Liversedge had been mistaken in his own direction.

“Not to say know it,” responded the farmer. “It ain’t the sort of place I’d go to, and what’s more, unless I’m much mistook, it ain’t the sort of place you’d go to either. For it ain’t got a good name, sir, and if you’ll take my advice, asking your pardon if not wished for, you won’t go next or nigh it.”

The Duke looked such an innocent enquiry that the farmer became fatherly in his manner, and recommended him to keep out of bad company. He said that if he were to call the Bird in Hand a regular thieves’ ken he wouldn’t be telling any lies, and added if it was plucking the Duke was after there were those whom he would very likely meet at the Bird in Hand who would leave him without a feather to fly with. He had to be coaxed to divulge the locality of the inn, and finally did so with a heavy sigh, and a warning that he would not be held responsible for whatever ill might come of it. “It’s betwixt and between Norton and Arlesey,” he said, “a matter of three or four miles from here, more, if you was to go by the pike road till you come to the road as leads to Shefford, and turn down it. But if you’re set on going there’s a lane which’ll take you right past it, and it goes by way of Norton, off the Hitchin road.”

Armed with this information, the Duke returned to the White Horse and sought out Mrs. Appleby, and asked her if she knew where he could hire a gig, or a riding-horse. It then transpired that if only he had told her earlier that he would be wanting a gig he could have had hers, and with pleasure, and old Mrs. Fawley, to whom she had lent it, might have gone to visit her daughter any other day, and not a mite of difference which. However, when she heard that the Duke only wished to drive quite a short distance, her brow cleared, and she said that if it should not be too late for him the gig was bound to be back in the stables by four o’clock, and could very well be taken out again. The Duke thanked her, and accepted this offer. She then firmly sat him down to a luncheon of cold meat, which he did not in the least want, and did her best to persuade him to let the waiter fetch up some porter, a very strengthening drink which would set him up rarely. But the Duke hated porter, and was resolute in declining.

Owing to old Mrs. Fawley’s inability to keep punctual hours, it was nearly five o’clock before the gig was returned to its owner; but the Duke thought that he would have time to reach the Bird in Hand, and to return again before darkness fell, and he decided not to postpone his visit to Mr. Liversedge. He naturally did not inform Mrs. Appleby of his destination, being reasonably sure, from what he had learned from his market-acquaintance, that she would do what lay in her power to restrain him from venturing to such a haunt of vice. It did not seem likely, in view of Mr. Liversedge’s declared requirements, that he stood in much danger of being robbed of the money in his pockets, or in any way molested, but he took the precaution of leaving the greater part of his money locked up in his chest of drawers; and he loaded one of his new duelling-pistols, and slipped it into his pocket. Thus armed, and having acquainted himself more particularly with the way to Arlesey, he mounted on to the gig, and set off at the sedate trot favoured by the stout cob between the shafts.

It was not long before he came to the lane leading from the Hitchin pike-road. He turned into this, but was soon obliged to allow the cob to slacken his pace to a walk, since the lane, once past the village of Norton, dwindled rapidly into something little better than a cart-track, and was pitted with deep holes. It was also excessively muddy; and he was forced continually to dodge unlopped branches of the nut-trees which bordered it. He met no other vehicles, which was just as well, since the track was too narrow to allow of two vehicles being abreast, and the only human being he saw was a well-grown schoolboy at the hobbledehoy stage, who came into view as he rounded the fifth bend, and splashed through a more than usually large pond of stagnant water.

He did not pay much heed to the boy at first, but as he drew towards him he noticed that he seemed to be in trouble, stumbling along in an uncertain way, as though he were ill, or the worse for drink. Then, as he came almost abreast of him, he saw that the lad, who was dressed in good but shockingly mired clothes, and seemed to have lost his hat, was extremely pale, and had a black eye. He drew up, his quick compassion stirred, and as he did so the boy’s uncertain feet tripped in a rut, and he fell headlong.

The Duke jumped down from the gig, and bent over him, saying in his soft voice: “I am afraid you are not very well: can I help you?”

The boy looked up, blinking at him in a bemused fashion, and the Duke perceived that in spite of his lusty limbs he was little more than a child. “I don’t know,” he said thickly. They took all my money. I fought them, but there were two, and—and I think they hit me on the head. Oh, I feel so sick!”

In proof of this statement, he suddenly retched, and was very sick. The Duke supported him while the paroxysm lasted, and then wiped his face with his handkerchief. “Poor boy!” he said. “There, you will be better now! Where do you live? I will take you to your home.”

The boy, who was leaning limply against his shoulder, stiffened a little at this, and said in a gruff way: “I’m not going home. Besides, it isn’t here. I shall do very well. Don’t trouble—pray!”

“But where is your home?” Gilly asked.

“I won’t say.”

This was uttered in rather a belligerent tone, which caused Gilly to ask: “Have you run away, perhaps?”

The boy was silent, and made an effort to scramble to his feet, thrusting the Duke away.

“I beg your pardon!” Gilly said, smiling. “I should know better than to ask you such awkward questions, for people have been doing the same to me all my life. We will not talk about your home, and you shan’t tell me more than you care to. But would you not like to get up into my gig, and let me drive you wherever it is you are making for?”

There was another silence, while the boy made an ineffectual attempt to brush the mud from his pantaloons. His round, freckled face was still very pale, and his mouth had a sullen pout. He cast a suspicious, sidelong look at the Duke, and sniffed, and rubbed his nose. “They took all my money,” he repeated. “I don’t know what to do, but I won’t go home!” He ended on a gulping sob that betrayed his youth, flushed hotly, and glared at the Duke.

Gilly was far too tactful to notice that unmanly sob. He said cheerfully: “Well, to be sure, it is very hard to decide on what is best to be done without having time to reflect. Have you friends in the neighbourhood to whom I could take you?”

“No,” muttered the boy. He added grudgingly: “Sir.”

“Then I think I had better drive you to the inn where I am putting up, and see what can be done for that black eye of yours. What is your name?”

The boy gave another sniff. “Tom,” he divulged reluctantly. “I want to go to London. And I would have gone, too, only that I asked those men the way to Baldock, and they said they would put me on the road, and then—and then—” He ground his teeth audibly, and said in a kind of growl: “I suppose I was a regular green one, but how was I to tell—?”

“No, indeed, it is the kind of thing that might happen to anyone,” the Duke agreed, propelling him gently towards the gig. “Up you get!”

“And I landed one of them a couple of wisty castors!” Tom told him, allowing himself to be helped into the gig. “Only they had cudgels, and that is how it came about. And they took my five pounds, and my watch, which Pa gave me, and when I came to myself they were gone. I don’t care for having my canister milled, but it is too bad to have taken all my money, and if I could catch them Pa would have them transported!”

The Duke, having put him safely into his seat, went to the cob’s head, and began to turn the gig in the narrow space available for the manoeuvre. He was not at all inclined to take his youthful protégé to an inn of such apparent ill-fame as the Bird in Hand, even though it seemed highly probable that Tom might there realize his wish of catching his assailants; and he decided that his business with Mr. Liversedge would have to be postponed until the next day. Having turned the gig, he mounted on to the box seat, gathered, up the reins, and gave the cob the office to trot homewards. Tom sat slumped on the seat beside him, sunk in depression, sniffing at intervals, and wiping his nose with a grubby handkerchief. After an interval, he said with would-be civility: “I don’t know why you should put yourself to this trouble, sir. I am sure you need not. I daresay I shall do very well when my head stops aching.”

“Oh, you will be as right as a trivet!” Gilly said. “Had you a bag with you, and did the thieves steal that as well?”

Tom fidgeted rather uncomfortably. “No. That is—Well, the thing is I couldn’t bring my portmanteau, sir, because—Well, I couldn’t bring it! But then, you know, I had my money, and I thought I could buy anything I might need.”

The Duke, feeling that he had much in common with his young friend, nodded understandingly, and said that it did not signify. “I expect one of my nightshirts will not fit you so very ill. How old are you?”

“Fifteen,” replied Tom, a hint of challenge in his voice.

“You are very big! I had thought you older.”

“Well, I do think anyone might suppose me to be seventeen at least, don’t you?” Tom said, responding to that gratifying remark, and speaking in a far less belligerent tone. “And I am very well able to take care of myself—in general. But if sneaks set upon one two to one there is no doing anything! And I shall never have such a chance again, because they will watch me so close—Oh, it is too bad, sir! I wish I was dead! They would have been sorry then! At least, Pa would, but I daresay Mr. Snape wouldn’t have cared a button, for he’s the greatest beast in nature, and I hate him!”

“Your schoolmaster?” hazarded the Duke.

“Yes. At least, he is my tutor, because Pa wouldn’t have me go to school, which I had liefer have done, I can tell you! And when it came to his reading to me in the chaise, not even something jolly, like Waverley, or The Adventures of Johnny Newcome, which is a famous book, only of course he took it away from me—he would!— but the horridest stuff about Europe in the Middle Ages! As though anyone could listen to such dry fustian! And in the chaise, sir! There was no bearing it any longer!”

“It was certainly very bad,” agreed the Duke sympathetically. “But they will all do it! I remember my own tutoronce tried to interest me in Paley’s Natural Theology upon one of our journeys from Bath to S—to my home!” he corrected himself swiftly.

“That sounds as though it would be just as dry!” said Tom, impressed.

“Oh, worse!”

“What did you do, sir?”

The Duke smiled. “I was very poor-spirited: I tried to listen.”

“Well, I hit Mr. Snape on the head, and ran away!” said Tom, with a return to his challenging manner.

The Duke broke into his low laugh. “Oh, no, did you? But how did you contrive to do that when you were driving along in a chaise?”

“I couldn’t, of course, but the thing is we changed horses at Shefford, and then when we had not gone a mile out of the town the perch broke, and we were obliged to stop. And the postilion was to ride back to Shefford to procure another chaise for us, and when he was gone old Snape said we would take a walk in the wood, and that would not have been so bad, but what must he do but pull his stupid book out of his pocket again, just when I had seen a squirrel’s drey—at least, I am pretty sure it was one, and I would have found out if he had but let me alone! But he is such a prosing, boring beast he don’t care for anything worth a fig, and he said we would read another chapter, and so I floored him. I have a very handy bunch of fives, you know,” he said, exhibiting his large fist to the Duke, “and I dropped him with a flush hit just behind his ear. And if you are thinking, sir,” he added bitterly, “that it wasn’t a handsome thing to do, to hit him from behind, I can tell you that I owe him something, for he is a famous flogger, and is for ever laying into me. Did your tutor too?”

“No, very seldom,” replied the Duke. “But he was a great bore! I fear I could never have floored him, for I was not a big fellow, like you, but I own I never thought of doing so. Did you knock him out?”

“Oh, yes!” said Tom cheerfully. “I don’t think he is dead, though. I could not wait to see, of course, but I should not think he could be. And in a way it will be as well if he is not, because they would hang me for it, wouldn’t they?”

“Oh, I don’t suppose it is as bad as that!” Gilly consoled him. “Did you then make your way from Shefford?”

“Yes, and the best of it is he will not know which way I went, and I kept to the woods, and the fields, so all the chaises in the world won’t help him. I thought I would get on the coach for London, and see all the sights there, which he would not let me do, horrid old addle-plot! Only fancy, sir! We drove up from Worthing, and we spent just one night in London, and the only thing he would let me see was St. Paul’s Cathedral! As though I cared for that! Not even the wild beasts at the Exeter Exchange! Of course I knew he would never take me to a theatre, and it was no use trying to give him the bag then, for someone would have been bound to have seen me. But when the perch broke, and such a chance offered, I do think I should have been a regular clodpole not to have seized it! And now—now I haven’t a meg, and it is all for nothing! But one thing issure!—I won’t go tamely home! If I can’t get to London, but very likely I shall think of a way to do so, I shall make for the coast, and sign on a barque as ship’s boy. If there had been any pirates left I should have done that rather even than have gone to London. Though I would like to see the sights, and kick up some larks,” he added wistfully.

“Don’t despair!” said Gilly, much entertained by this ingenuous history. “Perhaps we can contrive that you shall go there.”

An eager face was turned towards him. “Oh, sir, do you think I might indeed? But how?”

“Well, we will think about that presently,” promised the Duke, emerging from the lane on to the Hitchin road. “First, however, we must lay a piece of steak to that eye of yours.”

“Sir, you are a regular Trojan!” Tom said, in a rush of gratitude. “I beg your pardon for not being civil to you at first! I thought you was bound to be like all the rest, jawing and moralizing, but I see you are a bang-up person, and I do not at all mind telling you what my name is! It’s Mamble, Thomas Mamble. Pa is an ironmaster, and we live just outside Kettering. Where do you live, sir?”

“Sometimes in the country, sometimes in London.”

“I wish we did so!” Tom said enviously. “I have never been south of Kettering until they sent me to Worthing. I had the measles, you know, and the doctor said I should go there. I wish it had been Brighton! That would have been something like! Only not with old Snape. You can have no notion what it is like, sir, being Pa’s only son! They will not leave me alone for a minute, nor let me do the least thing I like, and everything is wretched beyond bearing!”

“But I know exactly what it is like,” Gilly said. “If I did not, I suppose I should have been just like all the rest, and should have handed you back to your tutor.”

“You will not!” Tom cried, in swift alarm.

Gilly smiled at him. “No, not quite immediately! But I think you must go back to your father in the end, you know. I daresay he is very much attached to you, and you will not like to cause him too much anxiety.”

“N-no,” agreed Tom rather grudgingly. “Of course I shall have to return, but I won’t do so until I have been to London! That would be worth anything! He will be in one of his grand fusses, I suppose, and I shall catch it when I do go back, but—”

“You might not,” the Duke said.

“You do not know Pa, sir!” replied Tom feelingly. “Or Snape!”

“Very true, but it Is possible that if he knows you have been my guest, and if I meet your papa, and talk to him, he may not, after all, be so very angry with you.”

Tom surveyed him doubtfully. “Well, I think he will be,” he said. “I don’t care, mind you, for I can stand a lick or two, but Pa is the biggest ironmaster in all our set, and as rich as—as Crassus, and he has the deuce of a temper! And he is for ever wanting to bring me up a gentleman, and he won’t have me do anything vulgar and jolly, or know the out-and-out fellows in Kettering, and he is bound to be in a rage over this!”

“Well, that would be very terrible,” said the Duke, in his tranquil way. “Perhaps you had best return to Mr. Snape after all.”

“No, that I won’t do!” declared Tom, with great resolution.

It was not long after this that they reached Baldock, and drove into the yard of the White Horse. Tom, although much revived in spirit, was physically a good deal shaken still, and was glad of the support of the Duke’s arm into the inn. The waiter, whom they encountered in the lobby at the back of the house, stared at them in gloomy surprise, but the Duke paid no attention to his, merely saying: “Desire Mrs. Appleby to step up to my room, please,” and leading Tom to the staircase.

When Mrs. Appleby came sailing into the Pink Parlour a few minutes later, she was not only very curious, but more than half inclined to take exception to Tom’s arrival. The waiter had described his appearance in unflattering terms, and although she had been prompt to snub him, she had been equally prompt to come up and inspect Tom for herself.

She found him sitting in the armchair by the fire, while the Duke bathed his bruised head and face. He certainly looked a disreputable object, and Mrs. Appleby exclaimed in a displeased voice: “Well! And may I ask, sir, what is this?”

The Duke was quite unused to being spoken to in that tone, and he turned his head to look at her in some surprise. Without knowing why she did so, she dropped a slight curtsy, and said very much more mildly: “I understood as you wanted to speak to me, sir.”

“Yes,” the Duke replied. “I want a bedchamber to he prepared for my young friend, if you please. He has had the misfortune to be robbed by a couple of footpads. Sit still, Tom, and hold that wet pad to your eye: Mrs. Appleby will bring you some raw beef to put upon it directly.”

“I didn’t know you was going to bring any young gentleman back with you, sir, I’m sure.”

“No, indeed, how should you?” said the Duke. “I did not know it myself. Have you some objection?”

“Of course, sir, if he is a friend of yours—! Only it seems a queer thing, with you not mentioning it, and him with no baggage, and all!”

“It is a sad fix for him to be in,” agreed the Duke. He smiled at her. “We must do what we can to make him more comfortable.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Applesby helplessly. Tm sure I would not wish to be unfeeling, but I never heard of a young gentleman trapesing about the country, and no carriage, nor nothing, and seemingly quite by himself!”

“No, it was certainly unwise, but he will know better another time. I expect he would be glad of that hot brick you brought up for me.”

At this, Tom uttered a growling protest, which had the effect of drawing Mrs. Appleby’s attention to him. She now perceived that he was younger than she had at first supposed, and looking extremely wan and battered. Her face softened; she said: “I will see to it, sir. Oh, dearie me, and the way his good clothes are spoilt! I do hope he has not run away from school!”

“No, I have not!” Tom said.

She shook her head, but said: “Do you take him to No. 6, sir: you will find the bed is ready made up. And if he will take off his jacket and his nether-garments I will see what can be done to furbish them up.”

She bustled away, and Tom, asserting that he was quite well, and did not wish to go to bed, allowed himself to be led down the passage to a small room at the back of the house. When upon his feet he was obliged to confess that he still felt as sick as a horse. The Duke said that he would feel very much better when he had swallowed a glass of hartshorn and water, and rested for a little while, and helped him to strip off his mired clothing. Tom then lay down upon the bed in his underlinen, and the Duke covered him with the patchwork quilt.

“I did not think it would be bellows to mend with me so easily!” Tom murmured discontentedly. “But he hit me with a cudgel, after all! I am as dead as a herring! I only hope old Snape is feeling half as bad!”

He closed his eyes on this pious aspiration; and the Duke, wondering a little ruefully into what difficulties his sympathy with a fellow-sufferer might lead him, went away to ask Mrs. Appleby for some hartshorn.

Chapter X

The Duke did not borrow Mrs. Appleby’s gig again until the following afternoon, for the morning was fully taken up with purchasing such articles of apparel and toilet as he considered necessary for his protégé’s comfort and respectability. His notions did not always jump with Tom’s, since he laid what that young gentleman considered to be undue stress on the indispensability of soap and tooth-powder, and other such frivolous luxuries. Nor did Tom perceive the necessity of carrying with him on his travels more than one shirt. But the Duke was firm on these points, and after dealing patiently with a sudden and alarming fit of independence in young Mr. Mamble, in which he was informed that Pa would not like his son and heir to be beholden to anyone, he led him forth on a tour of the Baldock shops, assuring him that he would keep faithful tally of his expenditure, and present Pa with his bill in due course.

Mr. Mamble, whose resilient constitution Gilly could not but envy, had very soon recovered from his malaise, and had got up from his bed on the previous evening in time to work his way steadily through two glazed veal olives, a collop of beef, part of a leg of pork, two helpings of ratafia pudding, and a felly. He told Gilly, after this repast, that he was now in bang-up form; and after selecting two apples from a dish on the side-table, which he set aside to be consumed when pangs or hunger should attack him later in the evening, he settled down before the fire, and poured forth a jumbled history of his life and its trials to his sympathetic host. From this recital Gilly gathered that his mother had died when he was still in short-coats, and that his remaining parent, who seemed to have prospered exceedingly in his business, had set his heart and his considerable energy on to the task of turning his heir into an out-and-out gentleman. To this end he had engaged Mr. Snape, whose unenviable duty it was to instruct Tom in every branch of a gentleman’s education, to keep him out of mischief and low company, and to guard him from the chances of chills or infection. Mr. Snape appeared to be a joyless individual, whom the Duke found no difficulty at all in disliking. He very soon perceived that Tom’s lot was worse than his own had been, for whereas Lord Lionel was naturally untroubled by considerations of gentility, and had been quite as determined that his nephew should learn to clean his own guns, saddle and bridle his horses (and even shoe them), carve joints, and protect himself with his fists, as that he should acquire a proper knowledge of the Humanities, Mr. Mamble was morbidly anxious that Tom should engage on no occupation which might lead supercilious persons to suppose that he was not born into the haut ton. Consequently, poor Tom, himself unaffected by social ambitions, had been fenced in on all sides, his natural bents frowned upon, and his overflowing spirits curbed. The Duke, listening to him, felt real pity stir his heart, and thought that if he could lighten the lot of this oddly likeable boy he would have performed the first meritorious action of his life. Whatever the outcome of his interview with Mr. Liversedge, he would, he supposed, be journeying back to London within two days. If the zealous Mr. Snape had not by that time tracked his pupil down, he would take him to London, and from Sale House write a letter to Mr. Mamble, informing him that, having picked Tom up on the road, he had carried him to town, and would render him up to his parent whenever that busy gentleman could spare the time to visit the Metropolis. The Duke knew the world well enough to be sure that the knowledge that his son had fallen into noble company would suffice to allay Mr. Mamble’s wrath; and he had little doubt that if he chose to put himself to the trouble of doing it he could persuade Mr. Mamble to dismiss Mr. Snape, and send his son to school. If, on the other hand, Mr. Snape arrived in Baldock before he had left for London, the Duke, who had never made the least push to deal with his own tutor, anticipated no difficulty in dealing with Tom’s. As for the desirability of setting an anxious parent’s mind at rest without loss of time, he dismissed this without compunction. It would ill become him, he thought, to waste any consideration on Tom’s father when he had none for his own far more estimable uncle. If Lord Lionel stood in need of a lesson, so, in greater measure, did Mr. Mamble, and he should have it. Meanwhile, he would keep Tom safely out of harm’s way—and heaven alone knew what harm Tom would plunge into if allowed to wander about the countryside alone and gratify his longing to see all the sights of London.

Tom, whose mind knew no half-shades, had swiftly passed from suspicion of his benefactor to wholehearted admiration for him. His scruples having been relieved by the Duke’s promise to render a strict account of any financial transaction incurred on his behalf to his father, he accepted a guinea to spend with alacrity, and assured the Duke of his ability to amuse himself while he was absent on his own affairs.

Accordingly, the Duke set out once more on his quest of the Bird in Hand, choosing this time to go by the pike-road as far as to the cross-road leading to Shefford. He was obliged to traverse some distance down a rough lane, but a little way beyond the village of Arlesey the Bird in Hand came into sight, a solitary alehouse standing amongst some tumbledown outhouses and barns, and displaying a weather-beaten and much obliterated sign on two rusty chains which creaked when the wind swayed them. The house was a small one, and might from its situation have been supposed to have catered merely for farm-labourers. It had a neglected appearance, but an impression that it was slightly sinister the Duke attributed to his imagination. He drew up, and alighted from the gig, tethering the cob to a post. At this hour of the day there were no signs of life about the inn, and when he reached the door, and entered the tap-room into which it led, he found no one there. The room was small, and foetid, with the fumes of stale smoke from countless clay pipes, and the droppings of gin and ale. The Duke’s nostrils curled fastidiously, and he walked over to an inner door, and pushed it open, calling: “House! house!”

After a prolonged pause, a spare individual in a plush waistcoat shining with grease shuffled out from the nether regions of the hostelry, and stood staring at the Duke with his mouth open and his watery eyes popping out of their sockets. Several teeth were missing from his jaw, and a broken nose added nothing to the comeliness of his face. The sight of a well-dressed stranger within the precincts of the inn appeared to bereave him of all power of speech.

“Good afternoon!” said the Duke pleasantly. “Have you a Mr. Liversedge staying at this inn?”

The man in the plush waist coat blinked at him, and said enigmatically: “Ah!”

The Duke drew out his pocket-book, and produced from it his cousin’s card. “Be so good as to take that up to him!” he said.

The man in the plush waistcoat wiped his hand mechanically on his breeches, and took the card, and stood holding it doubtfully, and still staring at the Duke. The sight of the pocket-book had made his eyes glisten a little, and the Duke could only be glad that he had had the forethought to leave the bulk of his money at the White Horse. The presence of the pistol in his pocket was also a comfort.

He was just about to request his bemused new acquaintance to bestir himself, when a door apparently leading out to the stableyard opened, and a burly man with grizzled hair and a square, ill-shaven countenance appeared upon the scene. He cast the Duke a swift, suspicious look out of his narrowed eyes, and asked in a wary tone what his business might be. The man in the plush waistcoat mutely held out Mr. Ware’s elegantly engraved visiting-card.

“I have business with Mr. Liversedge,” said the Duke.

This piece of information seemed to afford the newcomer no gratification, for he shot another and still more suspicious look at Gilly, and removed the card from his henchman’s hand. It took him a little time to spell out the legend it bore, but he did it at last, and it seemed to the Duke that although his suspicion did not abate, it became tinged with uneasiness. He fixed his eyes, which held no very pleasant expression, on the Duke, and palpably weighed him up. Apparently he saw nothing in the slight, boyish figure before him to occasion more than contempt, for his uneasy look vanished, and he gave a hoarse chuckle, and said: “Ho! It is, is it? Well, I dunno, but I’ll see.”

He then mounted a creaking stair, and the Duke was left to endure the gaze of the man in the plush waistcoat.

After a prolonged interval, the landlord reappeared. The Duke had caught the echoes of his voice raised in argument in some room above; and it seemed to him when he came downstairs that his uneasiness had returned. The Duke should have been able to sympathize with him: he was feeling a little uneasy himself.

“You’ll please to come up, sir,” said the landlord, with the air of one repeating a hard-learned lesson.

The Duke, who had slid one hand unobtrusively into the pocket of his drab Benjamin, and closed it round the reassuring butt of Mr. Joseph Manton’s pistol, drew a breath, and trod up the stairs.

He was led down a passage to a room at the back of the house. The landlord thrust the door wide, and announced him in simple terms: “Here he is, Sa—sir!” he said.

The Duke found himself upon the threshold of a square and not uncomfortable apartment which had been fitted up as a parlour. It was very much cleaner than the rest of the house, and it was plain that efforts had been made to achieve a semblance of elegance. The curtains, though faded, had lately been washed; the table in the centre of the room was covered with a red cloth; and one or two portable objects seemed to indicate that the guest at present inhabiting the room had brought with him various articles of furniture of his own.

Standing before a small fire was a middle-aged gentleman of somewhat portly habit of body, and a bland, pallid countenance surmounted by a fine crop of iron-grey hair, swept up into a fashionable Brutus. He was dressed with great propriety in a dark cloth coat and light pantaloons; the points of his shirt-collar brushed his whiskers; his cravat was arranged with nicety; and it was only upon closer examination that the Duke perceived that his elegant coat was sadly shiny, and his shirt by no means innocent of darns. There was a strong resemblance between him and the landlord, but his countenance had an air of unshakable good-humour, which the landlord’s lacked, and nothing could have exceeded the gentility with which he came forward, holding out a plump hand, and saying: “All, Mr. Ware! I am very happy to receive this visit from you!”

The Duke had by this time visualized the possibility of his corpse being cast into the evil-smelling pond beside the inn, but he could see no obligation on him to take Mr. Liversedge’s hand, he merely bowed. Mr. Liversedge, whose eyes had been running over him shrewdly, smiled more widely than ever, and drew out a chair from the table, and said: “Let us be seated, sir! Alas, you have come upon a very painful errand! I assure you I feel for you, sir, for I have been young myself, but my duty is to my unfortunate niece. Ah, Mr. Ware, you little know the pain and grief—I may say the chagrin—you have inflicted on one whose tender heart was been so undeservedly smitten!” Overcome by the picture his own words had conjured up, he disappeared for a moment or two into a large handkerchief.

The Duke sat down, and laid his hat on the table. He said in his diffident way: “Indeed, I am sorry for that, Mr. Liversedge. I should not wish to cause any female pain or grief.”

Mr. Liversedge raised his bowed head. “There,” he said, much moved, “speaks a member of the Quality! I knew it, Mr. Ware! True Blue! When my niece has wept upon this bosom, declaring herself forsaken and betrayed, My love, I have said, depend upon it a scion of that noble house will not fail to do you right! I thank God, Mr. Ware, that my faith in humanity is not to be rudely shaken!”

“I hope not, indeed,” said the Duke. “But, you know, I had no notion that your niece’s affections were so deeply engaged.”

“Sir,” said Mr. Liversedge, “you are young! you do not yet know the depths of woman’s heart!”

“No,” agreed the Duke. “But will money allay the—the pangs of grief and chagrin?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Liversedge simply.

The Duke could not help smiling at this. He said in a meek tone: “Forgive me, Mr. Liversedge, but is not a—a transaction of this nature repugnant to a man of your sensibility?”

“Mr. Ware,” said Mr. Liversedge, “I shall not conceal from you that it is deeply repugnant. I am, as you have divined, a man of sensibility, and it is with profound reluctance that I have compelled myself to take up the cudgels on behalf of my orphaned niece.”

“At her instigation?” murmured the Duke.

Mr. Liversedge surveyed him, a calculating look in his eye. “My niece,” he said, “has been put to great expense on account of expectations raised, Mr. Ware. I need not enumerate. But bride-clothes, you know, sir, and—”

“Five thousand pounds?” said Gilly, in bewildered accents.

They looked at one another. “I am persuaded,” said Mr. Liversedge reproachfully, “that you would not wish to do anything unhandsome, sir. Considering the elevated nature of my niece’s expectations, five thousand pounds cannot be considered an extortionate figure.”

“But I am quite unable to pay such a sum,” said Gilly.

Mr. Liversedge spread out his hands. “It is very disagreeable for me to be obliged to remind you, sir, that you are nearly related to one, who, I am persuaded, would not regard such a trifling sum any more than you or I would regard a crown piece.”

“Sale?” said the Duke. “Oh, he would never pay it!”

Mr. Liversedge said in a shocked voice: “I cannot be brought to believe, sir, that his Grace would grudge it!”

The Duke shook his head sadly. “I do not stand next to him in the succession, you know. I have two uncles, and a cousin before me. And my father, Mr. Liversedge, is not a rich man.”

“I cannot credit that his Grace would permit his name to be dragged through the mire of the Courts!” said Mr. Liversedge, with resolution.

“And I am sure,” said the Duke gently, “that you would shrink from dragging your niece’s name through that mire.”

“Shrink, yes,” acknowledged Mr. Liversedge. “But I shall steel myself, Mr. Ware. That is, I should do so if his Grace were to prove adamant. But what a shocking thing if the head of such a noble house should have so little regard for his name!”

“I wonder what course you had the intention of pursuing if I had fled to Gretna Green with your niece?” said the Duke thoughtfully. “For I cannot suppose that an alliance for her with anyone so lacking in fortune and expectation as myself was what you had in mind!”

“Certainly not,” replied Mr. Liversedge, without a blush. “But she is a minor, after all! little more than a child! The marriage might have been set aside—at a price.”

The Duke laughed. “Come, we begun to understand one another better! You may as well own, sir, that your object is to squeeze money from my noble relative, no matter on what pretext.”

“Between these four walls, Mr. Ware,” said Liversedge cheerfully. “Between these four walls!”

“How much it must disgust a man of your sensibility to be reduced to such straits!” observed the Duke.

Liversedge sighed. “It does, sir. In fact, it is quite out of my line.”

“What is your line?” enquired the Duke curiously.

Mr. Liversedge waved an airy hand. “Cards, sir, cards! I flatter myself I had established myself with every prospect of success. But Fate singled me out to be the object of vile persecution, Mr. Ware. I am—temporarily, of course—without the means to re-establish myself suitably, and you see me forced to eke out a miserable existence in surroundings which, I am persuaded, you will easily descry to be, totally unfitting for any man of gentility. You, Mr. Ware, who are putting up, I make no doubt, in the comfort of the George—an excellent hostelry!—can have little notion—”

“No, no, above my touch!” murmured the Duke demurely. “The White Horse!”

“The White Horse,” said Mr. Liversedge feelingly, “may not aspire to the elegance of the George, but compared with this hovel in which I am compelled to sojourn, Mr. Ware, it is a palace!”

The Duke did not deny it, and after a slight pause during which Mr. Liversedge appeared to dwell longingly on the amenities afforded by post-inns, that worthy gentleman heaved a sigh, and continued in a more optimistic tone: “However, I do not complain. Life, Mr. Ware, is full of vicissitudes! Let me but once come about, and I do not despair of finding just the locality for the opening of a house where gentlemen with a taste for play may be sure of finding entertainment. In all modesty, Mr. Ware, I will say that I have a talent above the ordinary for such enterprises. If ever I should have the happiness to welcome you to any house under my direction, I fancy you will be pleased with, what you will find. Nothing shoddy, I assure you, and admittance by password only. I shall pay particular attention to the quality of the wine in my cellar: nothing could be more fatal to the success of such a venture than to fob off one’s patrons with inferior wine! But to achieve my object, sir, I must have Substance. Without Substance the result, if any, must be shabby, and, as such, too far beneath me to be considered.”

“You are frank!” said the Duke. “My cousin Sale, in fact, is to set you up in some gaming-hell!”

“That,” said Mr. Liversedge, “is to put the matter with vulgar bluntness, Mr. Ware.”

“I fear I must wound your susceptibilities more deeply still! It is not your niece who makes this demand, but you, and the whole affair is a fudge!”

Mr. Liversedge smiled at him with great patience. “My dear sir, you wrong me, indeed you do!”

“I am very sure I do not! You have owned to me—”

A plump, uplifted hand checked him. “Between these four walls, Mr. Ware!” Liversedge said, with a return to his reproachful manner.

The Duke stared at him. Suddenly he said: “And what, sir, if I were to express my willingness to marry your niece? Have you thought of that?”

“Of everything!” Liversedge assured him affably. “I, of course, with my niece’s happiness in mind, should be overjoyed. But it would not do for you at all, Mr. Ware, and your noble relatives, I fear, would do what lay in their power to prevent such an unequal match. Alas that it should be so, but it is the way of the world, after all, and if I were your father, sir, I confess I should strain every nerve to put a bar between you and my poor Belinda. Love-begotten, you know. Dear me, yes! Quite ineligible! You are young, and impetuous, but I feel sure your relatives must see it as I do myself.”

“Mr. Liversedge,” said the Duke, “I do not believe that your niece has the least notion of suing me for breach of promise! You think to out-jockey me, to take me in like a goose, in fact! This is all a hoax! I daresay your niece knows nothing of the matter!”

Mr. Liversedge shook his head sorrowfully. “It pains me, Mr. Ware, to meet with this unmerited mistrust! it pains me excessively! I did not look to have my good faith so doubted; I did not expect, in face of all that has passed between you and my unfortunate niece, to be met with what I must—reluctantly, believe me!—term callousness! If you were an older man, sir, I should be strongly tempted to request you to name your friends. As it is, I shall content myself with bringing before you irrefutable proof of the integrity of my actions.”

He rose to his feet as he spoke, and the Duke followed suit rather warily. Liversedge smiled his understanding, and said: “Have no fear, Mr. Ware! A guest under my roof, you know, I must hold sacred, however moved I may be. Not, I beg you to believe, that I lay the least claim to this roof. But the principle holds! Pray be seated, for I shall not be long gone!”

He bowed with great dignity, and went out of the room, leaving the Duke to wonder what might be going to happen next. He walked over to the window restlessly, and stood fidgeting with the blind-cord. As he stood there, he had the satisfaction, at least, of seeing the landlord and the man in the plush waistcoat walking across the dirty yard with pails in their hands. From the medley of squeals in the distance he inferred that they were on their way to feed the pigs. He had not soberly supposed that either of them would be called in to overpower him, for he could not perceive any good end to be achieved through such methods, but he felt more at his ease with them out of earshot. Mr. Liversedge might be an entertaining scoundrel, but a scoundrel he certainly was, and would probably stop at very little to extort money from his victims. It was evident that he considered the supposed Mr. Ware a negligible opponent. The Duke had seen the indulgent contempt in his smile, and had done nothing to dispel it. He was by this time quite determined not to allow himself to be bled of as much as a farthing. By fair means or foul—and he would feel very little compunction at using foul means against a gentleman of Liversedge’s kidney—he must wrest Matthew’s letters, which Liversedge had in all probability gone away to collect, away from him. And since it seemed unlikely that this could be achieved without Mr. Manton’s pistol coming into play, he was happy to see the landlord and his henchman going off to feed the pigs.

Mr. Liversedge was absent for some ten minutes, but presently the Duke heard his ponderous tread, and turned round to face the door.

It opened; Mr. Liversedge’s voice said unctuously: “Come in, my love! Come and tell Mr. Ware how deeply he has wounded your tender heart!”

The Duke jumped, for this was a possibility he had not envisaged. The thought darted across his mind that if his true identity should be guessed it might occur to Mr. Liversedge’s fertile brain that the Duke of Sale, held to ransom, would prove a more profitable investment than his niece’s broken heart. His hand slid once more into the pocket of his coat, to grasp the butt of his pistol, and he braced himself to face the inevitable disclosure.

Into the room stepped a vision of loveliness. The Duke caught his breath, and stood staring. His cousin Matthew had certainly spoken of Belinda’s beauty, but he had not prepared him for anything as superb as the creature who now stood on the threshold, regarding him out of eyes so large, so innocent, and of so deep translucent a blue as to make his senses swim for a dizzy moment. He closed his own eyes involuntarily, and opened them again to make sure that they had not deceived him. They had not. He beheld a veritable beauty. A face of rose-leaf complexion was framed in a cascade of guinea-gold curls, artlessly bound with a ribbon of scarcely a deeper blue than those glorious eyes; the brows were delicately arched; the little nose classically straight; the wistful mouth, with its short upper-lip, as kissable as it was perfect in proportion.

The Duke swallowed once, and waited. That melting gaze widened a little as it rested on him, but the lady said nothing.

“Did not Mr. Ware promise you marriage, my love?” said Mr. Liversedge, closing the door, and bending solicitously over the vision.

“Yes,” said the vision, in a soft, west-country voice. “Oh, yes!”

If the Duke had been dizzy before, his senses now reeled. He could think of nothing to say. He wondered, for an unreasoning instant, if those tender blue eyes could be sightless, since he resembled his cousin hardly at all. But when he stared into them he saw a sort of speculation in their gaze, and knew that they were not.

“And did he not write you letters, my love, which you very properly gave to me, promising that he would make you his wife?” prompted Mr. Liversedge.

“Oh, yes, he did!” corroborated Belinda, smiling angelically at the Duke, and affording him an entrancing glimpse of even teeth, gleaming like pearls between her parted lips.

Mr. Liversedge spoke in a voice of studied patience.

“Were you not completely taken-in, my dear child? Was it not a crushing blow to you when he declared off and left you forsaken?”

Under the Duke’s bemused stare, the smile left Belinda’s face, and two large tears welled over, and rolled down her cheeks. “Yes, it was,” she said, in a voice that would have wrung pity from Herod. “He said I should have a purple silk dress when we was married.”

Mr. Liversedge interposed rather hastily, patting one dimpled hand. “To be sure, yes, and other things too! And now you have none of them!”

“No,” agreed Belinda dolefully. “But I shall be paid a vast sum of money for being so taken-in, and then I may have a—”

“Yes, my love, yes!” interrupted Mr. Liversedge. “You are upset, and no wonder! I would not have brought you face to face with Mr. Ware, who has so grossly deceived you, but that he doubted the depth of the wound he had dealt yon. I will not compel you to remain another instant in the same room with him, for I know it to be painful to you. Go, my love, and trust your uncle to care for your interests!”

He opened the door for her, and after another of her wide, innocent looks at the Duke, she dropped a curtsy, and withdrew.

Mr. Liversedge shut the door upon her, and turned to find the Duke standing still rooted to the spot, and lost in astonishment. He said: “Ah, Mr. Ware, I perceive that you are confounded!”

“Yes,” said Gilly faintly. That is—Good God, sir, what are you about to keep such a lovely creature in this noisome alehouse?”

“No one,” said Mr. Liversedge, “could regret the unhappy necessity more than I do! Alas, sir, when the pockets are to let, one has little choice of domicile! But I feel it! I assure you that I feel it profoundly. Your solicitude does you honour, Mr. Ware, and I trust it will be unnecessary for me to say more in prosecution of—”

“Mr. Liversedge,” interrupted the Duke, “you ask me to believe that you hold some two or three letters I was mad enough to write to your niece, and for these you are demanding the preposterous sum of five thousand pounds! I may deplore your choice of domicile, but this cannot affect the point of issue between us!”

“Five letters, Mr. Ware,” sighed Mr. Liversedge deprecatingly. “And each of them worth the very moderate price I have set upon them! I daresay your memory may not be not quite perfect. And so prettily expressed as your billets are! I will refresh your memory, if you will permit me! Pray be seated, sir! I should not wish you to feel that there was the least deception: five letters, and you recalled but three! Now, if I were not a man of honour, Mr. Ware, I might have allowed that to pass! You would have bought them from me, and thought yourself rid of the whole business! And I might then have driven a bargain with you for the remaining two! I know of those who would have done so. Yes, indeed, sir, I assure you there are many such shabby tricksters in the world. But Swithin Liversedge is not to be counted amongst them! Do but take your seat, and you shall see the letters with your own eyes! You may have them for a paltry sum. I will engage myself to give them up to you on receipt of bills for five thousand pounds.”

The Duke sat down again at the table, opposite to his host, in a drooping posture that, while it might deceive Liversedge into believing him to be overcome by consternation, enabled him to get his hands under the table-edge undetected. “You have the letters!” he uttered.

“Yes, Mr. Ware, yes!” beamed Liversedge. “You shall count them!”

He put his hand into the breast of his coat as he spoke, and as he glanced down, the Duke gripped the ledge of the table, and drove it violently forward. It caught Mr. Liversedge all unawares, and full in the midriff. He uttered a sound between a grunt and a shout, tried to save himself and failed. His chair tipped backwards, and he fell, snatching fruitlessly at the red table-cloth. In the same instant, the Duke, releasing the table, whipped the pistol from his pocket, and thumbed back the hammer. “Now, Mr. Liversedge!” he said, panting a little, for the table was a heavy one, and had taken all his strength, to thrust forward. “Don’t move! I am held to be a very fair shot.”

But the command was unnecessary. As he looked down at the portly frame at his feet, he saw that Mr. Liversedge was incapable of moving. His head had struck against the iron fender, and not only was a sluggish trickle of blood oozing from his scalp, but he was insensible. Mechanically, the Duke’s left hand went to his pistol, and grasped the hammer. He pressed the trigger, as Captain Belper had taught him to do, and gently released the hammer, easing it down. Still holding the pistol in his hand, he dropped on his knee beside Liversedge, and slipped his left hand into the breast of his coat. A slim package had been already half drawn from an inner pocket. He pulled it out, and swiftly assured himself that it did indeed contain some half a dozen letters directed in Matthew’s hand. It was characteristic of him that before he rose to his feet he slid a hand over Mr. Liversedge’s heart. It was beating rather faintly, but there was no doubt that its owner still lived. The Duke hauled his inanimate body, not without difficulty, clear of the grate, and rose to his feet. As he did so, the door opened, and he turned swiftly, his pistol at the ready, his thumb on the hammer. But he did not pull it back a second time. Belinda stood on the threshold, looking in wide-eyed surprise at her uncle’s prostrate form.

“Oh!” she said. “Is he dead?”

“No,” the Duke replied. He crossed the floor to her side, and shut the door. “He will recover: this is only a swoon! What made you hold your peace just now? You know I am not Matthew Ware!”

“Oh, yes!” she replied, smiling at him happily. “You are not at all like Mr. Ware! He is much bigger than you, and more handsome, too. I liked Mr. Ware. He said he would give me—”

“Why did you not inform your uncle of his mistake? What made you accept me as you did?”

“Uncle Swithin doesn’t like it when I dispute with him,” she explained. “He said I was to say just what he told me, and I should have a purple silk gown.”

“Oh!” said the Duke, a good deal taken aback. “I am excessively obliged to you, and if a purple silk gown is what you desire I would I could give you one! How old are you?”

“I think I shall soon be seventeen,” she answered.

“You think! But you know when you have a birthday, surely?”

“No,” said Belinda regretfully. “Uncle Swithin’s head is cut open.”

This remark seemed to be more in the nature of a statement than a reproach, but the Duke, glancing down at Mr. Liversedge’s form, saw that his pallid countenance was ghastly in hue, and felt a certain measure of compunction. He did not think that Mr. Liversedge was in much danger of bleeding to death, but he did not desire his death, and thought, moreover, that his own position might be awkward if this should happen. He bent over him again, and bound his own handkerchief round his head, saying: “When I am gone, you may summon help, but pray do not do so until then!”

“No,” said Belinda obediently. “I wish you was not going! Where did you come from?”

Her unconcern with her uncle’s plight made the Duke laugh in spite of himself. “I did not drop from a balloon, I assure you! I came from Baldock, and I think it is time that I returned there. Your uncle will be recovering in a moment, and since I do not care for the look of his friends belowstairs, I think I had best depart before he can summon them to his aid.”

“Mr. Mimms is very disagreeable,” she observed. She raised her lovely eyes to his face, and said simply: “I wish you would take me with you, sir!”

“Indeed, I wish I might!” he said. “I am very sorry to leave you in such a place. Were you fond of my—of Mr. Ware?”

“Oh, yes!” she replied, a soft glow in her eyes. “He was a very pretty-behaved gentleman, and when we were married he said I should have jewels, and a purple silk gown.”

The thought that his young cousin had wounded anyone so young and so beautiful had been troubling the Duke, but this artless speech considerably allayed his qualms. He smiled, and, colouring a little, said: “Forgive me—I have very little money in my pocket, but if your heart is set upon a silk gown—I do not know about such matters, but will you take this bill and buy yourself what you like?”

He had been half afraid that she might be offended, but she smiled in a dazzling way at him, and accepted the note he was holding out. “Thank you!” she said. “I had never any money to spend of my own before! I think you are quite as handsome as Mr. Ware!”

He laughed. “No, no, that is flattery, I fear! But I must not stay! Goodbye! Pray do not let your uncle use you again as he has done!”

He caught up his hat from the table, cast a final glance at Mr. Liversedge, who was beginning to recover his complexion, and went swiftly out of the room, and down the stairs. Belinda sighed regretfully, and looked in a doubtful way at her guardian. In a few more moments he groaned, and opened his eyes. They were blurred at first, but they cleared gradually. He put a hand first to his cracked skull, and then, instinctively, to his inner pocket. Then he groaned again, and enunciated thickly: “Lost!”

Belinda, a kind-hearted girl, perceiving that he was striving to pick himself up, helped him into a chair. “Your head is broke,” she informed him.

“I know that!” said Mr. Liversedge, tenderly feeling his skull. “That I should have been floored by a greenhorn! For God’s sake, girl, don’t stand there with your mouth half-cocked! Fetch me the brandy-bottle from the cupboard! Why did you not call Joe, silly wench? Five thousand pounds gone in the flash of an eye!”

Belinda brought him the brandy, and he recruited his strength by a generous pull at the bottle. His colour was by now much more healthy, but his spirits were sadly overborne.

“Done by a gudgeon!” he said gloomily. “Done by a miserable, undersized sapskull that has no more wits than to talk of marriage to the first pretty wench he meets! I was never more betwattled in my life! If I could but get my hands on your precious Mr. Matthew Ware—!”

“Oh, it wasn’t Mr. Ware!” said Belinda sunnily.

Mr. Liversedge raised his aching head from between his hands and stared at her in blear-eyed surprise. “ What? ” he demanded. “Did you say it was not Mr. Ware?”

“Oh, no! Mr. Ware is a much prettier young gentleman,” said Belinda. “He is tall, and handsome, and—”

“Then who the devil was he?” interrupted Mr. Liversedge incredulously.

“I don’t know. He did not say what his name was, and I didn’t think to ask him,” replied Belinda, rather regretfully.

Mr. Liversedge hoisted himself out of his chair with an effort. “My God, what have I done to be saddled with such a fool?” he exclaimed. “If he was not Ware,— why—why, girl, could you not have told me so?”

“I didn’t know you would wish me to,” said Belinda innocently. “You said I must say just what you told me, and you don’t like it if I don’t obey you. And I like him quite as well as Mr. Ware,” she added consolingly.

Mr. Liversedge boxed her ears.

Chapter XI

The Duke returned to Baldock in high fettle. For one who had never before fended for himself, he had managed the affair, he thought, pretty well. Matthew’s letters were safely tucked into his pocket; he had not paid Mr. Liversedge a farthing for them; and he had not had recourse to Manton’s pistol. Even Gideon could hardly have done better. In fact, Gideon would probably not have done as well, since Mr. Liversedge, confronted by his formidable size and extremely purposeful manner, would undoubtedly have conducted himself far more warily. Gilly was too modest not to realize that the success of his stratagem must be largely attributed to his lack of inches, and his quite unalarming appearance. Mr. Liversedge had palpably summed him up as a scared boy within one minute of his having entered his parlour, and had not thought it necessary to be upon his guard. That had not been very wise of Mr. Liversedge, but Gilly was inclined to suspect that for all the breadth and scope of his visions, Mr. Liversedge was not a rogue of any great mental attainment. However, be that as it might, Gilly had scarcely expected to have succeeded so well, and he thought he had a very good right to feel in charity with himself. Nothing now remained to do but to burn Matthew’s letters, set Matthew’s anxious mind at rest, and go back to London with Tom next day. In his present mood he was rather sorry to have no excuse for absenting himself any longer from his household. Certain aspects of his stolen journey had not been altogether comfortable, but on the whole he had enjoyed himself very well, and he had derived a good deal of satisfaction from the discovery that he was not as helpless as he had feared he might be.

This mood of gentle elation suffered a set-back upon his arrival at the White Horse. The inn appeared to have become the focus of interest in the town, for a large and motley crowd was gathered before it, in the centre of which the impressive figure of the town-beadle seemed to be haranguing a heated and flustered Mrs. Appleby. Then the Duke perceived that one of the beadle’s ham-like hands was grasping young Mr. Mamble by the coat-collar, and a sense of foreboding crept over him. He drew up, and prepared to step down from the gig.

Nearly everyone was too much absorbed in the strife raging between the beadle, Mrs. Appleby, a weedy man in a black suit, a farmer with a red face, and a stout lady in a mob-cap, whose voice was even shriller than Mrs. Appleby’s, to have any attention to spare for the arrival of a gig; but the melancholy waiter, who had been surveying the scene with the gloomy satisfaction of one who has foreseen trouble from the outset, chanced to look up as the Duke rose from the driving-seat, and exclaimed: “Ah, here is the gentleman!”

The effect of these simple words was slightly overwhelming. Tom, taking advantage of an involuntary slackening of the grip on his collar, twisted himself free, and thrust his way through the crowd, crying thankfully: “Oh, sir! Oh, Mr. Rufford!

He had scarcely reached the Duke’s side, and clutched his arm, when Mrs. Appleby had seized the other arm, saying indignantly: “Thank goodness you’ve come, sir! Such goings-on as I never saw, and me not knowing which way to turn!”

“Hif you are the cove as is responsible for this young varmint,” said the beadle, reaching the Duke a bare fifteen seconds later than Mrs. Appleby, “hit is my dooty to inform you—”

The rest of this pronouncement was lost in the instant hubbub that arose. The weedy man, the fanner, and the lady in the mob-cap all broke into impassioned speech. The Duke, stunned by Mrs. Appleby’s voice in one ear, and Tom’s in the other, begged them to speak to him one at a time, but was not attended to. Various members of the crowd thought it incumbent upon them to take sides in the dispute, and for a few minutes the fragments of their observations reached the Duke in a confused medley. Such phrases as he caught could not be regarded as other than ominous. The words “lock-up house”—“upsetting of the Mail”—and “a-smashing of Mr. Badby’s good cart” were being freely bandied about; and whereas one half of the crowd seemed disposed to take a lenient view of whatever it was that Tom had done, the other and more vociferous half was urgent with the beadle for his immediate transportation.

“I didn’t! I did not! ” Tom asserted passionately. “Oh, sir, pray tell them I did not!”

“Sir!” began the beadle portentously,

“Mr. Rufford, sir, do you make him attend, for listen to me he will not!” besought Mrs. Appleby.

A sudden lull fell, and the Duke realized with dismay that everyone, with the exception of the beadle, was looking at him in the evident expectation that he would instantly take command of the situation. He had never regretted the absence of his entourage more. He even wished that his Uncle Lionel could have been suddenly and miraculously wafted to the scene. The very sight of Lord Lionel’s imposing figure and aristocratic visage would be enough to cause the crowd to disperse, while any well-trained footman would have cleaved a way for his Grace in a fashion haughty enough to have quelled even the beadle. But the Duke found himself bereft of all whose business in life it was to shield him from contact with the vulgar herd, and was obliged to fend once more for himself. He contrived to shake off the two frenzied grips on his arms, and to say in his usual gentle way: “Pray let us go into the house! And do not, I beg of you, all talk to me at once, for I can distinguish nothing that you say!”

His soft voice, falling upon the ears of the crowd in striking contrast to the strident accents of the combatants, seemed to have an instant and sobering effect. Even the beadle was not unaffected by the indefinable air of dignity which wrapped the Duke round, and raised no objection to withdrawing into the coffee-room of the inn.

“Come, Tom!” the Duke said. He saw one of the ostlers standing nearby, and added: “You there! Take the gig into the yard, if you please!”

He then passed into the White Horse, and Tom, Mrs. Appleby, the beadle, the weedy man, the farmer, and the lady in the mob-cap all crowded in after him. Once within the coffee-room both Tom and Mrs. Appleby would have poured their stories into his ears, but he interrupted them, saying: “Pray wait! I will attend to you in a minute.” He looked at the beadle, and said calmly: “Now will, you tell me what all this bustle is about?”

The beadle was impressed in spite of himself. Unquestionably this quiet young gentleman was a member of the Quality. His experience had taught him the value of civility in dealing with such, and it was in moderated accents that he informed the Duke that four varmints, of whom young Mr. Mamble was the ringleader, had not only caused obstruction upon the King’s highway, but had effected the ruin of an honest citizen’s new cart, and had been guilty of the frightful crime of delaying and seriously incommoding the Mail, the penalty for which offence, as Mr. Rufford was no doubt aware, being no less than the sum of five pounds.

“Dear me!” said the Duke. “And how did all this come about, Tom?”

“I didn’t do those things! At least, I never meant to, and how was I to know the Mail was approaching?” said Tom, deeply aggrieved. “You told me I might amuse myself!”

By this time another person had edged himself into the room, a nervous-looking man in a muffler, who awaited no invitation to describe to the Duke in detail the damage suffered by his new cart through the young cob’s rearing up in alarm, and subsequently kicking in the front of the vehicle, at the unprecedented sight of two donkeys, a cow, and Mr. Datchet’s old bay gelding being ridden backwards down the main street.

“It was a race! ” explained Tom.

The beadle here took up the tale, and from his recital the Duke gathered that just as the entrants for this peculiar race reached the corner of the road, the Mail swept round it, coming from the opposite direction, and narrowly escaped an overturn. One of the leaders, in fact, got a leg over the trace, the coachman had the greatest difficulty in controlling his team, and all the passengers had suffered severe shocks to their nerves.

After recounting the exact circumstances of the crime, the beadle attempted to outline to the assembled company the ultimate fate of the sporting young gentlemen, and the immediate and awful penalties they had incurred. He was at once interrupted by the lady in the mob-cap, who asserted tearfully that her Will had always been a good boy, as well Mr. Piddinghoe knew, until led astray by evil companions. She was seconded by the weedy man, who stated that nothing short of the most violent pressure could have induced his Fred so to demean himself; and by the farmer, who said loudly and belligerently that it was nobbut a boy’s prank, and he would dust Nat’s jacket for him, and no more said.

However, a great deal more had to be said before the Duke could settle the affair. Mrs. Appleby very unwisely demanded to be told what should get into the boys to make them take and run a race backwards, and this encouraged Toni to explain indignantly and at length the difficulties of handicapping fairly two donkeys, one cow, and an old horse. He seemed to think that he deserved congratulation for having hit upon so novel a solution to the problem, and dwelled so insistently on the excellent performance of the cow under these conditions that everyone but the Duke and the beadle allowed themselves to be diverted from the main point at issue, and either exclaimed several times that they would never have thought it, or argued that it stood to reason the cow would have as good a chance as the horse, particularly seeing as the horse was that broken-down old brute of Mr. Datchet’s.

The Duke, meanwhile, detached the owner of the ruined cart from the circle, and settled his claims out of hand. Much mollified, Mr. Badby stowed away the money which the Duke paid him for the repair of his cart, and said that he had been young himself, and was never one to create a to-do over a trifle. It then transpired that the driver and the guard of the mail-coach had very handsomely forborne to lodge an official charge against Tom, so that with Mr. Badby’s retirement from the lists, the beadle was left without any very powerful weapon to use against the miscreants. The Duke was then inspired to suggest that after so much alarm and excitement everyone must stand in need of such revivifying cordials as could be found in the tap-room, and invited the assembled company to refresh themselves there at his expense. The idea took well; and after the Duke had sternly dismissed Tom to the Pink Parlour, and had promised the beadle that he should be suitably dealt with, the whole party repaired to the tap-room, where liberal potations of ale, gin, or porter very soon induced even the beadle and the weedy man, who proved to be Baldock’s leading tailor, to look upon the late disturbance as a very good jest. The Duke’s shy smile and quite unconscious charm were not without their effect, and since he was found to have not the least height in his manner it was not long before his obvious quality was forgotten, and he was being confided in on all manner of topics, from the Spasms endured by the lady in the mob-cap, to the shocking price of serges, corduroys, shalloons, and tammies.

By the time the Duke judged that he could bid farewell to his guests without causing them to think that he fancied himself above his company, Mrs. Appleby had three times whispered to him that his dinner was spoiling in the oven. He took his leave at last, and went upstairs to the parlour, where he found Tom awaiting him in a mood of almost equally matched penitence and vainglory. Tom was ready to justify himself at length, but as his protector, instead of rating him, succumbed to a fit of pent-up laughter as soon as he had fairly shut the door, his aggressive manner left him abruptly, and he offered up a handsome apology for having been the cause of so much trouble and expense.

“Indeed, I perceive clearly that you will soon ruin me!” the Duke said, still laughing. “I don’t know what you deserve should be done to you!”

“Sir, you won’t send me back to Pa and Mr. Snape, will you?” Tom demanded anxiously.

“No, no, nothing short of transportation will do for you!” the Duke told him.

His mind relieved of its only dread, Tom grinned gratefully, and applied himself with his usual energy and appetite to his dinner.

When he had retired to bed, which, since he was, he said, unaccountably tired, he was induced to do at an early hour, the Duke committed his cousin’s letters to the flames, and sent the waiter to obtain for him paper, ink, pens, and wafers. These commodities having been brought, the fire made up, and the blinds drawn, he sat down to write two letters. The first of these was to Matthew, at Oxford, and did not occupy him long. He sealed it with one of the wafers, wrote the direction, and was just about to scrawl his name across one corner when he recollected himself, and reopened the letter to add a postscript. “ I fear you will have to pay some sixpences for this history ” he wrote, smiling to himself,—“ but it would never do, you know, for me to frank this. I hope you will not grudge it! ” He then affixed a fresh wafer to his missive, laid it aside and wrote upon a new sheet of paper:

White Horse,

Baldock.

My dear Gideon,

Here the letter came to a sudden halt, it having just occurred to the Duke that he would in all probability see his dear Gideon before a letter could reach him. However, after biting the end of his quill reflectively for a few minutes, he decided that since had had nothing to read, and did not wish to retire to bed, he would write to Gideon after all. The urge to confide some part at least of his amazing new experiences to Gideon was irresistible. Besides, a description of Tom’s race and its consequences would occupy several sheets, so that Gideon would be forced to disgorge large sums to the Post Office for the privilege of receiving a letter from his noble relative, and that would be a very proper revenge on him for having tried to horrify one smaller and younger than himself with a blood-curdling novel. The Duke gave a little chuckle, dipped his quill in the ink, and lost no time in explaining this to Gideon. After that he embarked on a humorous account of his stage-coach journey, and in the most high-flown terms he could summon to mind, assured his cousin that he had already slain a considerable dragon, in the shape of an out-and-out villain, whom he had tricked, outwitted, and left for dead in a haunt of thieves and desperate characters from which he himself was lucky to have escaped with his life. He could fancy how Gideon would grin when he read this, and grinned himself. “ And if you should wonder, my dear Gideon, ” he continued, “ why I should put myself to the trouble of writing to inform you of this when I have the intention of returning to London tomorrow, I must further inform you that I have engaged myself as bearleader to a youth of tender years, whose fertile mind suggests to him such ways of amusing himself as seem likely to keep me too fully occupied during the coming week to have leisure to spare for a visit to your chambers. ”

He then favoured his cousin with the whole story of the backward-race, told him that his circle of friends had been enlarged to include a tailor, a lady who kept a pastry-cook’s shop, a beadle, and three farmers, and was just about to end his letter when he remembered something else which Gideon must certainly be told about. “ By the by, ” he wrote, “ if you never hear of me again, you will know that I have fled the country, taking with me the most beautiful creature I ever beheld in my life. Alas that the notice of my engagement must by now have appeared in the Gazette! I would I could describe my inamorata to you, but no words could do even faint justice to her loveliness. The heart left my bosom in one bound! Ever your most affectionate

Adolphus.

He closed his letter, and directed it, reflecting that it would undoubtedly bring Gideon round to Sale House at the first opportunity. It was still quite early in the evening, and the rumble of voices in the tap-room came faintly to the Duke’s ears. He was just wondering whether or not to seek entertainment there when a knock fell on the door, and the waiter came in, and, bending a look upon him compound of curiosity and disapproval, informed him that there was a young person belowstairs who was desirous of seeing him. “Leastways,” he added, “I dunno who else it could be, for there ain’t no one else here like what she says you are, not in this house there ain’t.”

“A young person to see me?” echoed the Duke blankly. “You must be mistaken!” A sudden and unwelcome suspicion darted into his mind. He said: “Good God!” and changed colour.

The waiter observed his consternation with a certain satisfaction. “Ah!” he said. “And go away, which I told her to, she will not!”

“I’ll come!” the Duke said hastily, and went to the head of the stairs, and looked down into the lobby. Seated on a chair, a bandbox on her knees, and another at her feet, was Belinda, her enchanting face framed in a blue bonnet, and a pelisse buttoned up to her white throat. In front of her, and in an attitude of unmistakable hostility, stood Mrs. Appleby.

Some instinct warned the Duke that he beheld Trouble. A prudent man would at this point retire to his room, denying all knowledge of the fair visitor, and leave Mrs. Appleby to get rid of her, which, he judged, she would very soon do, if left undeterred. But the Duke had either too little prudence or too much chivalry to adopt this course; he went down the stairs.

Both ladies looked up quickly, one greeting him with a blinding smile, and the other with a stare of outraged virtue. “Oh, sir, please I had to come!” said Belinda.

“This young woman, sir,” said Mrs. Appleby grimly, “appears to have business with you, for all she cannot give you a name! And I will take leave to tell you, sir, that mine has always been a respectable house, and such goings-on I will not have!”

“Oh, hush, Mrs. Appleby!” begged the Duke. “I am acquainted with this lady!”

“Of that I make no doubt, sir!” retorted Mrs. Appleby.

The Duke sought wildly in his mind for an explanation likely to satisfy the landlady, and could hit upon only one. “She is Tom’s sister!” he said, devoutly hoping that Belinda would not deny it. “She has come in search of him, of course!”

Belinda, who seemed to have a mind very responsive to suggestion, nodded her head at this, and smiled at Mrs. Appleby.

“ Indeed! ” pronounced that lady. “Then perhaps you will have the goodness to tell me what your business is, miss?”

“To find Tom,” replied Belinda happily.

“I never heard such a tale, not in all my lifeI didn’t!” exclaimed Mrs. Appleby, outraged. “Why, you’re no more like him than I am! Sir, I’ll have you know—”

“And I have brought all my things with me, because I dare not go back, so if you please, sir, will you take care of me?” added Belinda, turning her melting gaze upon the Duke.

“Not in my house he will not!” declared Mrs. Appleby, without hesitation.

By this time a small audience, consisting of the waiter, the boots, the tapster, and two chambermaids had gathered in the lobby, and the Duke, acutely unhappy at finding himself the centre of so much curiosity, said: “Please step up to the parlour, Miss—Miss Mamble! And do you come up too, Mrs. Appleby! I will explain it to you in private!”

Belinda got up readily from the chair. The Duke took the bandboxes from her; and Mrs. Appleby, after demanding to know if her various servants could find nothing better to do than to stand there gaping, said that no amount of explanation would reconcile her to Belinda’s presence in the inn. But as Belinda and the Duke were by this time halfway up the stairs she was obliged to follow them, maintaining a threatening monologue all the way.

The Duke ushered Belinda into his parlour, set down the bandboxes, and firmly shut the door upon her. He turned to confront Mrs. Appleby.

That redoubtable lady at once broke into speech. If, she declared, Mr. Rufford had the least hope of her keeping that Hussy under her roof for as much as one hour he was sadly mistaken! To be sure, she might have guessed, after the events of this day, that something of the sort would happen, but boys’ mischief was one thing, and goings-on of this nature quite another.

“Mrs. Appleby,” interrupted the Duke, “can you seriously suppose that I nourish the slightest improper design towards that child? Why, she is hardly out of the school-room!”

“I know nothing of your designs, sir,” retorted Mrs. Appleby, “but hers are plain enough, and give her a room in my house I will not!”

“Then I must give her mine, and sleep on the sofa in the parlour,” said the Duke calmly.

Mrs. Appleby fought for breath.

“You cannot,” proceeded the Duke, “turn a child of that age into the street at this hour. Indeed, I am persuaded you are by far too good a woman to think of doing so.”

“Let her,” said Mrs. Appleby terribly, “go back to wherever it was she came from!”